blob: 0bbfb88740829d2e85edd989100ab7e2af62398d [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
7What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1|beta 3)
8=====================================================
9
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +000010*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000011
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +000015- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
16 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
17 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
18
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000019
20Extension Modules
21-----------------
22
23...
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +000024
25Library
26-------
27
28- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
29 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
30 raised is re-raised.
31
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +000032- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
33 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
34
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +000035- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
36 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
37 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
38 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
39 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
40 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
41 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
42 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
43 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
44 by the slice are recomputed now.
45
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +000046- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +000047
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000048Build
49-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +000050
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +000051- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
52 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
53 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000054
55C API
56-----
57
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +000058- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
59
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000060
61Documentation
62-------------
63
64...
65
66Tests
67-----
68
69...
70
71Windows
72-------
73
74...
75
76Mac
77---
78
79...
80
81New platforms
82-------------
83
84...
85
86Tools/Demos
87-----------
88
89...
90
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +000091
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +000092What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
93================================
94
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +000095*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +000096
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +000097License
98-------
99
100The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
101is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
102changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
103Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
104intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
105durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
106the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
107License::
108
109 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
110
111says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
112to Python 2.1.1.
113
114The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
115License Version 2.
116
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000117Core and builtins
118-----------------
119
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000120- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
121 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
122 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
123 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
124 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
125 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
126 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
127 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
128 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
129 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
130
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000131- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000132
133Extension Modules
134-----------------
135
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000136- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
137 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
138 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
139 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000140
141Library
142-------
143
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000144- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
145 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
146 returned.
147
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000148- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
149
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000150- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
151 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
152
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000153- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
154
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000155- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
156 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000157
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000158- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
159
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000160- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
161
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000162- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000163 the source code is updated and reloaded.
164
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000165Build
166-----
167
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000168- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000169
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000170What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
171================================
172
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000173*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000174
175Core and builtins
176-----------------
177
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000178- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000179 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
180
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000181- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
182 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
183 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
184 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
185
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000186- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
187 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
188
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000189- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
190 constant.
191
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000192- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
193 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
194 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
195 large), and to anomalies such as
196 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
197 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
198 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
199 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000200
201Extension modules
202-----------------
203
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000204- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
205 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000206 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
207 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
208 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000209
210Library
211-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000212
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000213- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000214 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000215 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
216 --swig-cpp.
217
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000218- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
219 it is set.
220
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000221- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000222
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000223- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
224 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
225 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
226 Closes bug #1039270.
227
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000228- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000229
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000230 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000231 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
232 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
233 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
234 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
235 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
236 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
237 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
238 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
239 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
240 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
241 + Updates to documentation.
242
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000243- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
244 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
245 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
246 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
247
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000248- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000249
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000250- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
251 applications should use the getmember function.
252
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000253- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
254
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000255- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
256 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
257 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
258 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
259 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
260 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
261 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
262 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
263 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
264
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000265- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
266 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000267 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000268
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000269- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
270 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
271 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
272 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
273 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
274 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
275 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
276 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000277
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000278- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
279 the new public features (of which there are many).
280
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000281- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000282 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
283 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
284 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
285 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000286 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000287
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000288- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
289
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000290- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
291 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
292 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
293 options.
294
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000295- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
296 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
297 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
298 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
299 conditions under which non-string values work.
300
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000301Build
302-----
303
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000304- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
305 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
306 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
307
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000308- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
309 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
310 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
311 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
312 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000313
314C API
315-----
316
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000317- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
318 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
319
320- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
321
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000322- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
323 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
324 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
325 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
326 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
327 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
328 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
329 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
330 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
331
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000332- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
333
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000334- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
335 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
336 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000337
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000338Tests
339-----
340
341- test__locale ported to unittest
342
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000343Mac
344---
345
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000346- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
347 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
348 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000349
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000350Tools/Demos
351-----------
352
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000353- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
354 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
355 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
356 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
357 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000358
359
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000360What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
361=================================
362
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000363*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000364
365Core and builtins
366-----------------
367
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000368- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000369 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
370
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000371- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
372 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
373 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
374 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
375 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
376 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
377 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
378 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000379 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
380 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
381 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
382 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
383 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000384
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000385- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
386 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
387 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
388 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
389 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
390
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000391- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
392
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000393- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
394 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
395
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000396- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
397 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
398 modified the list.
399
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000400- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
401 functions is now writable.
402
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000403- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
404 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
405 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
406 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
407
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000408- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
409 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
410 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
411 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
412 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000413
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000414- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
415 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
416
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000417Extension modules
418-----------------
419
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000420- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
421
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000422- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
423 data.
424
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000425- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
426 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
427 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
428 supposed to have been truncated away.
429
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000430- Added socket.socketpair().
431
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000432- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
433 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
434
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000435- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000436 versions of Python, have now been removed.
437
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000438Library
439-------
440
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000441- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000442 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000443
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000444- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
445 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
446
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000447- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
448 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
449
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000450- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
451
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000452- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
453 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000454
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000455- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
456 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
457
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000458- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
459
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000460- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
461
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000462- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
463
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000464- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
465 Percivall.
466
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000467- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
468 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
469
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000470- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
471 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
472 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000473 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000474
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000475- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
476 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
477 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
478 and exponent.
479
480- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
481
482- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
483 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
484 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
485
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000486- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
487 to the readline module.
488
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000489- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000490 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
491 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000492
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000493- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
494 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
495 contains symlinks.
496
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000497- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
498 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
499
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000500- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
501 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
502 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
503
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000504- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
505 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
506 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
507 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
508 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
509 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
510 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
511 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
512 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
513 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
514 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
515 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
516 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
517
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000518- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
519
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000520Tools/Demos
521-----------
522
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000523- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
524 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
525
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000526- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
527
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000528Build
529-----
530
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000531- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
532 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
533 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
534 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
535 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
536 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
537 plans to do so.
538
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000539- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
540 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
541
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000542- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
543 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
544
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000545- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
546 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
547
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000548- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
549 GNU/k*BSD systems.
550
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000551- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
552 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
553
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000554C API
555-----
556
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000557..
558
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000559Documentation
560-------------
561
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000562- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
563 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
564
565- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
566 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
567 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000568
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000569New platforms
570-------------
571
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000572- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
573
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000574Tests
575-----
576
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000577..
578
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000579Windows
580-------
581
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000582- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
583 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
584 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
585 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
586 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
587 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
588 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
589 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
590 the problem.
591
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000592Mac
593---
594
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000595..
596
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000597
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000598What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
599=================================
600
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000601*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000602
603Core and builtins
604-----------------
605
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000606- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
607 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
608 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
609 sensitive code.
610
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000611- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000612 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000613
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000614 @staticmethod
615 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000616
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000617 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000618
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000619- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
620 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
621 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
622 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
623 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
624 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
625 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
626 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
627 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
628 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
629 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
630
631 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
632 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
633 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
634 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
635 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
636 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
637 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
638
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000639- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
640 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
641
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000642- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000643 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000644
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000645- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000646 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000647 which was missing for no apparent reason.
648
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000649- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000650 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
651 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
652
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000653- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
654 types that support garbage collection.
655
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000656- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
657
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000658- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
659 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
660 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
661 Jython.
662
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000663- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
664
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000665- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
666 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
667
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000668- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
669 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
670 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000671
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000672- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
673 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
674 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
675
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000676Extension modules
677-----------------
678
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000679- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
680
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000681Library
682-------
683
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000684- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
685 TIS-620
686
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000687- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
688 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
689 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
690 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
691 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
692 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
693 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
694 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
695 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
696 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
697
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000698- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
699
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000700- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
701 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
702 same as when the argument is omitted).
703 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
704
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000705- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
706
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000707- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
708 schemes are offered.
709
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000710- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
711
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000712- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
713 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
714 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
715
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000716- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
717
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000718- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
719 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
720
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000721- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
722 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
723 when dummy_threading is being used.
724
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000725- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
726 from a tarfile.
727
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000728- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000729 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000730
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000731- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
732 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
733 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
734 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
735
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000736- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
737 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
738
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000739- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
740 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
741 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
742 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
743 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
744 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
745 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
746 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
747 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
748 by some other method in progress).
749
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000750- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
751 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
752 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000753
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000754- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
755
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000756- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
757 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
758 AM Kuchling.
759
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000760- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
761 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
762 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
763
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000764- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
765 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
766 instead of unsigned.
767
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000768- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000769 no longer part of the public API.
770
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000771- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
772 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
773 string methods of the same name).
774
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000775- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000776 SF patch 945642.
777
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000778- doctest unittest integration improvements:
779
780 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
781
782 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
783 DocTestSuites.
784
785- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
786 that provide thread-local data.
787
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000788- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
789 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
790
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000791- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
792
793- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
794 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
795 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
796
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000797- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
798
799 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
800 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
801 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000802
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000803 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
804 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
805 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
806 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
807
808 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
809 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
810
811 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
812 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
813 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
814 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
815
816 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
817 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
818 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
819 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
820 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
821
822 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
823 wrapping help output.
824
825 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
826 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
827 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000828
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000829C API
830-----
831
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000832- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
833 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
834 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
835 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
836 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
837 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
838 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
839 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
840 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
841 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
842 its visible semantics have not changed.
843
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000844- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
845 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
846
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000847Documentation
848-------------
849
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000850- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000851
852 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000853 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000854
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000855 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000856
857 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
858
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000859- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000860
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000861Tests
862-----
863
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000864- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +0000865 platforms that use the Makefile.
866
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000867- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
868 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
869 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
870
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000871
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000872What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
873=================================
874
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +0000875*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000876
877Core and builtins
878-----------------
879
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +0000880- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
881 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
882 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
883 objects now (one object instead of three).
884
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +0000885- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
886 Windows DLLs.
887
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +0000888- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
889 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +0000890
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +0000891- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
892 a new .pyc magic.
893
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +0000894- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
895 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
896 be there.
897
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +0000898- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
899 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
900 the LC_NUMERIC category.
901
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +0000902- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
903 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
904 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
905
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +0000906- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
907
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +0000908- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
909 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
910 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +0000911
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +0000912- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
913 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
914
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +0000915- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
916
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000917- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000918 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000919
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +0000920- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
921
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +0000922- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
923
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +0000924- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
925 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
926
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +0000927- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
928 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
929 Fixes bug #858016 .
930
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +0000931- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
932 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
933 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
934
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +0000935- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
936 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
937 improves their performance (about 35%).
938
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +0000939- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
940 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
941 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
942
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +0000943- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
944 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
945 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
946 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
947
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000948- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
949 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
950 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
951 length is not known).
952
953- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
954 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +0000955 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
956 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000957 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
958
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +0000959- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
960 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
961
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +0000962- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
963 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
964 keyword arguments.
965
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +0000966- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
967 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
968 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
969
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +0000970- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
971 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
972 cases.
973
974- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
975 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
976 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
977 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
978 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
979 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
980 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
981 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
982 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
983 a release build.
984
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +0000985- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
986 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
987
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000988- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000989 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000990
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +0000991- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
992 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
993 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
994 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
995 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
996 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
997 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
998 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
999 destroyed.
1000
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001001- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1002 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1003 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1004 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1005 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1006 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1007 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1008 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1009
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001010- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1011 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1012 character other than a space.
1013
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001014- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1015 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1016 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1017 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1018 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1019 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1020 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1021 attributes with the same name.
1022
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001023- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1024 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1025 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1026 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1027 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1028 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1029 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1030 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1031 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1032 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1033 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1034 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1035 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1036 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001037
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001038- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1039 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1040 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1041 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1042 This has been repaired.
1043
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001044- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1045
1046- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1047
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001048- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1049 over a sequence.
1050
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001051- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001052 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001053
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001054- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1055
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001056- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1057 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1058 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1059 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1060 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1061 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1062 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1063 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1064
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001065- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1066 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1067 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1068
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001069- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1070 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1071 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1072 freelist.
1073
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001074- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1075 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1076
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001077- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1078 number.
1079
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001080- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1081 a TypeError exception.
1082
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001083- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1084 820195.
1085
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001086- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1087 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1088 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1089
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001090- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001091 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1092 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001093
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001094- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1095 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1096 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1097
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001098- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1099 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001100 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001101
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001102- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001103 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1104 the first call.
1105
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001106
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001107Extension modules
1108-----------------
1109
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001110- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1111 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1112
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001113- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1114 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1115 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1116 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1117 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1118 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1119 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001120
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001121- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1122
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001123- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1124
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001125- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1126 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1127
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001128- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1129 fewer false positives.
1130
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001131- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1132 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1133
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001134- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001135 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1136
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001137- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001138 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001139 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001140 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1141 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001142
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001143- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1144 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1145 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1146 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1147
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001148- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1149 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1150 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1151 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1152 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1153 #897625.
1154
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001155- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1156 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1157
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001158- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1159 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1160 and pops on either side of the deque.
1161
1162- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1163 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1164
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001165- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1166 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1167 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1168 other functions that expect a function argument.
1169
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001170- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1171
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001172- os.getsid was added.
1173
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001174- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1175 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1176 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1177
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001178- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1179
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001180- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1181
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001182- readline.clear_history was added.
1183
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001184- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1185
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001186- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1187
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001188- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1189
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001190- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1191
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001192- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1193
1194- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1195
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001196- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1197
1198- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1199
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001200- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1201 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1202 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1203
1204- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1205 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1206 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1207 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1208 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1209 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1210 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1211
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001212- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1213 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1214 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1215 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001216
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001217- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001218 iterators from a single iterable.
1219
1220- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1221 of raising a TypeError exception.
1222
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001223- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1224 as parameter.
1225
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001226Library
1227-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001228
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001229- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1230 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1231 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001232
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001233- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1234 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1235 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001236
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001237- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001238
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001239- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1240 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001241
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001242- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1243 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1244
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001245- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1246
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001247- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001248 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001249
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001250- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001251 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001252
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001253- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1254
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001255- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1256 on cygwin and mingw32.
1257
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001258- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1259
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001260- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1261 module.
1262
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001263- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1264 installation scheme for all platforms.
1265
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001266- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001267 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001268
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001269- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1270 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1271 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1272
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001273- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1274 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1275 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1276
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001277- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1278
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001279- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1280
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001281- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1282 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1283
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001284- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1285 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1286 type pattern with the same value exists.
1287
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001288- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1289 when run from the command prompt).
1290
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001291- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1292 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1293
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001294- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1295 default sort).
1296
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001297- Added global runctx function to profile module
1298
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001299- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1300
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001301- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1302
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001303- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1304
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001305- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001306 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1307 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1308 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1309 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1310 accordingly.
1311
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001312- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1313 decoding standards.
1314
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001315- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1316 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1317 called for all requests.
1318
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001319- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1320 they are passed to the compiler.
1321
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001322- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1323 indent, width and depth.
1324
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001325- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1326 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1327
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001328- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1329 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1330
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001331- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1332
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001333- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1334
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001335- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1336
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001337- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1338 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1339
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001340- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001341 for better performance.
1342
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001343- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001344
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001345- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1346 a string).
1347
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001348- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1349
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001350- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1351
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001352- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1353
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001354- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1355
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001356- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1357 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1358 list of fieldnames.
1359
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001360- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1361 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1362
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001363- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1364
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001365- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1366 empty lists.
1367
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001368- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1369 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1370 and shelves.
1371
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001372- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1373 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1374
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001375- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001376 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1377 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001378
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001379- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1380 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001381 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001382
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001383- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001384 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1385 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1386
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001387- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1388 and removed in Py2.4.
1389
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001390- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1391
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001392- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1393
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001394Tools/Demos
1395-----------
1396
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001397- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1398 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1399
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001400- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1401
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001402- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1403 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1404 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1405 destination in situations where both files are given.
1406
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001407- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1408 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1409 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1410 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1411
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001412- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1413
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001414- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1415 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1416 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1417 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1418 now.
1419
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001420- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1421 in effect
1422
1423- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1424 C-c C-h
1425
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001426- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1427 -d option was given.
1428
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001429Build
1430-----
1431
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001432- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1433 build under OS X.
1434
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001435- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1436 --enable-profiling.
1437
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001438- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1439 is configured --with-tsc.
1440
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001441- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1442 on AMD64.
1443
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001444- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1445 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1446
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001447- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1448 removed.
1449
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001450- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1451 supported (see PEP 11).
1452
1453- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1454
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001455- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1456
1457- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1458 (see PEP 11).
1459
1460- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1461 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1462
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001463C API
1464-----
1465
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001466- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1467 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1468 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1469
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001470- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1471 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1472 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1473 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1474
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001475- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1476 generator objects.
1477
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001478- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1479 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001480 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1481 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001482
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001483- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1484 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1485
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001486- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1487 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1488 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1489 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1490 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1491
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001492- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1493 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1494 about 10% faster.
1495
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001496- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1497 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1498
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001499- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1500 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1501 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1502 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1503
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001504Windows
1505-------
1506
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001507- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1508 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1509 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1510 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1511
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001512- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1513 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1514 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1515
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001516
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001517What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1518===============================
1519
1520*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1521
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001522IDLE
1523----
1524
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001525- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1526 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1527 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1528 context-menu actions.
1529
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001530- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1531 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1532 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1533 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1534 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1535 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1536 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1537 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1538 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1539
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001540
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001541What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1542=============================================
1543
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001544*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001545
1546Core and builtins
1547-----------------
1548
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001549- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001550 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001551 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1552
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001553Extension modules
1554-----------------
1555
1556- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1557 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1558 than once. This has been fixed.
1559
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001560- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1561 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1562 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1563 call.
1564
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001565- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1566
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001567Library
1568-------
1569
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001570- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1571 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1572
1573- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1574 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1575 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1576 restored.
1577
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001578IDLE
1579----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001580
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001581- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001582
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001583Build
1584-----
1585
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001586- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1587 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1588
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001589C API
1590-----
1591
1592Windows
1593-------
1594
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001595- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1596 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1597
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001598- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1599
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001600Mac
1601---
1602
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001603- Various fixes to pimp.
1604
1605- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1606
1607- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1608 more problems than it solves.
1609
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001610
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001611What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1612=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001613
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001614*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1615
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001616Core and builtins
1617-----------------
1618
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001619- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1620 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1621
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001622- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1623 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001624 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001625
1626- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1627 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1628 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001629 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001630
1631- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1632 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001633
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001634- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1635 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1636 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1637
1638- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001639 770247.
1640
1641- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001642
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001643Extension modules
1644-----------------
1645
1646- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1647 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1648
1649- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1650
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001651- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1652
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001653- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1654 contained within the _strptime module.
1655
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001656- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1657 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1658
1659- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001660 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1661
1662- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1663 the find_class attribute, if present.
1664
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001665- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001666
1667 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1668 (SF bug 763298).
1669
1670 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001671 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1672 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1673 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001674
1675 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1676
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001677Library
1678-------
1679
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001680- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1681
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001682- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1683 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1684 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1685 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1686 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1687 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1688 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1689 or Tester().
1690
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001691- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1692 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1693 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1694 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1695 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1696 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1697 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1698 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1699 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001700
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001701 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001702
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001703- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1704 weren't before was an oversight.
1705
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001706- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1707 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1708
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001709- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1710 when there are no lines.
1711
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001712- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1713 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1714
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001715- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1716 to child processes.
1717
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001718- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1719
1720- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1721
1722- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1723 xmlrpclib.
1724
1725- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1726 responses.
1727
1728- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1729 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1730
1731- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1732 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1733 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1734
1735- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1736 used as patterns.
1737
1738- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1739 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1740 than Tk 8.3.
1741
1742- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1743
1744- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001745
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001746Tools/Demos
1747-----------
1748
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001749- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1750
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001751- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1752
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001753- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001754
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001755Build
1756-----
1757
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001758- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1759
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001760- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1761
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001762- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1763 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001764
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001765- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1766 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1767 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001768
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001769C API
1770-----
1771
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001772- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1773 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1774
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001775Windows
1776-------
1777
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001778- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1779 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1780 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1781 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1782 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1783 Python exception ::
1784
1785 thread.error: can't start new thread
1786
1787 is raised now.
1788
1789- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1790 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1791 instead of from DLL teardown.
1792
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001793Mac
1794---
1795
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001796- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001797 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001798 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1799 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1800 the executable in the bundle.
1801
1802- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001803
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001804- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1805
1806- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1807 on Panther.
1808
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001809What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1810================================
1811
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001812*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001813
1814Core and builtins
1815-----------------
1816
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001817- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1818 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1819 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1820 with the -i option.
1821
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001822- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1823 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1824
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001825- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1826 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1827
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001828- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1829 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1830 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1831 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1832 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1833 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1834 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1835 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1836 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1837 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1838 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1839 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1840 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001841
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001842- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1843 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1844 embedded in a lambda expression.
1845
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001846- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1847 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1848 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1849 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1850 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1851
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001852- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1853 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1854 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1855
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001856- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1857 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1858
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001859- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1860 It's writable again.
1861
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001862- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1863 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1864 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001865 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001866
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001867- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1868 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
1869 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
1870
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001871Extension modules
1872-----------------
1873
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00001874- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
1875 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
1876
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001877- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
1878 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
1879 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
1880 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
1881
1882- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
1883 collection.
1884
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00001885- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
1886 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
1887 unique within a single program run.
1888
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001889- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1890 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1891
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001892- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1893 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1894
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001895- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1896 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001897
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001898- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1899
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001900- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1901 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1902
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001903- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1904 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1905 for many BSD-derived systems.
1906
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001907
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001908Library
1909-------
1910
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001911- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1912 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1913 primary ones:
1914
1915 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1916 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1917 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1918
1919 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1920 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1921 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1922 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1923 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1924 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1925
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001926- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1927 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1928 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1929 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1930 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1931 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1932 argument.
1933
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001934- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1935 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1936 in the archive.
1937
1938- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1939 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1940
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001941- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1942 569574).
1943
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001944- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1945 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1946 no more.
1947
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001948- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1949 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1950 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1951 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1952 code coverage.
1953
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001954- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1955 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
1956 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001957 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
1958 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001959
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001960- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1961 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1962 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001963 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001964
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001965- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1966
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001967- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
1968 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
1969 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
1970 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
1971
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001972- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1973 handling.
1974
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001975- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1976 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1977
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00001978- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
1979 in socket.py.
1980
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00001981- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
1982
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00001983- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
1984 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
1985 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
1986 opener with proxy support.
1987
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001988- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
1989
1990- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
1991
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001992Tools/Demos
1993-----------
1994
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00001995- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
1996
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001997- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
1998
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001999- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2000 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002001
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002002- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2003 files.
2004
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002005Build
2006-----
2007
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002008- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002009 different root directory.
2010
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002011C API
2012-----
2013
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002014- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2015 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2016 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2017 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2018 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2019 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2020 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2021 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2022 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2023 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2024
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002025- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2026 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2027 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2028 from Python.
2029
2030
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002031New platforms
2032-------------
2033
2034None this time.
2035
2036Tests
2037-----
2038
2039- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2040 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2041
2042Windows
2043-------
2044
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002045- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2046
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002047- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2048 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2049 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2050 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2051 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2052 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2053 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2054 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2055 that's what it's for.
2056
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002057Mac
2058---
2059
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002060- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2061 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2062 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2063 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002064- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2065 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2066- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002067
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002068SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2069------------------------------------
2070
2071430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2072598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2073622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2074661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2075683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2076697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2077713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2078724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2079727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2080729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2081730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2082731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2083732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2084733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2085735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2086740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2087744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2088745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2089747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2090749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2091751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2092753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2093755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2094757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2095760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2096
2097
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002098What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2099================================
2100
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002101*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002102
2103Core and builtins
2104-----------------
2105
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002106- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2107 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2108
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002109- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2110 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2111 and cannot be strings).
2112
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002113- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2114 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2115 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2116 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2117
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002118- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2119 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2120 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2121 Python itself.
2122
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002123- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2124 the referenced object, if it has one.
2125
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002126- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2127 the thread started at
2128 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2129
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002130- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2131 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2132 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2133 placed on a list index.
2134
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002135- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2136 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2137 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2138 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2139
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002140- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2141 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2142 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2143 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2144 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2145 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2146 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2147
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002148- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2149 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2150 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2151 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2152 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2153
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002154- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2155 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002156
2157- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2158 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2159 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2160 #693195.)
2161
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002162- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2163 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002164
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002165- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002166 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002167 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2168 interpreter executions, would fail.
2169
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002170- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002171 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002172 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002173
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002174Extension modules
2175-----------------
2176
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002177- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2178 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2179 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2180 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2181
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002182- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2183 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2184
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002185- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2186 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2187 and Greg Chapman.)
2188
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002189- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2190 recursively.
2191
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002192- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002193 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2194 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2195 leaks.
2196
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002197- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2198
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002199- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2200 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2201 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2202 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2203 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2204 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2205 #705836.
2206
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002207- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002208 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2209
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002210- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2211 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2212 See SF bug #692416.
2213
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002214- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2215 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2216
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002217- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2218 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2219 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002220
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002221- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002222 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2223 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2224
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002225- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2226 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2227 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2228 timeouts to work properly.
2229
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002230Library
2231-------
2232
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002233- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2234 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2235 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2236 future release.
2237
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002238- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2239 for querying platform dependent features.
2240
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002241- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002242
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002243- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2244 pickle protocol versions.
2245
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002246- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2247 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2248 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2249
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002250- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2251
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002252- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2253 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2254 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2255 modules.
2256
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002257- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2258 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2259 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2260
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002261- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2262 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2263
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002264- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2265 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2266 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2267
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002268- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002269 MS Office extensions.
2270
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002271- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2272 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2273
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002274- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2275 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2276
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002277- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2278 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2279 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2280 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2281 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2282 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2283
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002284- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2285 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2286 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002287
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002288- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2289 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2290 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2291
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002292- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2293
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002294- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2295 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2296 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2297
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002298Tools/Demos
2299-----------
2300
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002301- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2302 See the module docstring for details.
2303
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002304Build
2305-----
2306
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002307- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2308 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002309
2310C API
2311-----
2312
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002313- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2314
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002315- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2316 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2317 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2318
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002319- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2320 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002321
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002322 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2323 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2324 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002325
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002326- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002327 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2328
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002329- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2330 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2331 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002332
2333New platforms
2334-------------
2335
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002336None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002337
2338Tests
2339-----
2340
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002341- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2342 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002343
2344Windows
2345-------
2346
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002347- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2348 function.
2349
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002350- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2351 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002352
2353Mac
2354---
2355
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002356- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2357 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002358
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002359- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2360 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002361
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002362- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2363 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2364 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002365
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002366- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002367 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2368 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002369
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002370- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2371 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002372
2373
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002374What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2375=================================
2376
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002377*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002378
2379Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002380-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002381
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002382- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2383 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2384 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2385
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002386- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2387 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2388 (SF patch #664376.)
2389
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002390- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2391 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2392 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2393 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2394 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2395 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002396 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002397
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002398- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2399 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2400 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2401 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002402 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002403
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002404- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2405 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2406 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2407 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2408 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2409 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2410 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2411 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2412 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2413 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2414 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2415
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002416- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2417 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2418 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2419 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2420 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2421 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2422
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002423- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2424 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2425
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002426- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2427 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2428 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2429 case.)
2430
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002431- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2432 passed as unicode strings.
2433
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002434- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2435 See SF bug #683467.
2436
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002437- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2438 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2439
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002440- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2441
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002442- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2443
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002444- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2445 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2446 arguments.
2447
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002448- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2449 See SF bug #667147.
2450
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002451- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002452 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002453 See SF bug #676155.
2454
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002455- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002456 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002457 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2458 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2459 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2460 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2461 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2462 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002463
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002464Extension modules
2465-----------------
2466
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002467- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2468 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2469 tp_as_number pointer.
2470
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002471- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2472 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2473 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2474 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2475 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2476
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002477- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2478
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002479- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2480
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002481- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002482 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002483 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2484 patch #678531.)
2485
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002486- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2487 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2488
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002489- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2490 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2491
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002492- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2493
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002494- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2495 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2496 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2497
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002498- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2499
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002500- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2501 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2502
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002503- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002504
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002505- datetime changes:
2506
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002507 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2508
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002509 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2510 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2511 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2512 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2513 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2514 now.
2515
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002516 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002517 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2518 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002519
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002520 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002521 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002522 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2523 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2524 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2525 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002526
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002527 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2528 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2529 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002530 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2531
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002532 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2533 by a later example coded by Guido.
2534
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002535 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002536 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2537 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2538 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002539 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2540 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2541
2542 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2543 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2544 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2545 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2546 tzinfo subclass instance.
2547
2548 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2549 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2550 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2551 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2552 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2553 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2554 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2555 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002556
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002557 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2558 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2559 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2560 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2561 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002562 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2563
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002564 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002565
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002566 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2567 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2568 as a naive datetime object.
2569
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002570 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2571 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2572 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2573
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002574 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2575 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2576 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2577 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2578 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2579 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2580 comparison.
2581
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002582 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2583 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2584 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2585 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002586 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002587
2588 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002589
2590 and ::
2591
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002592 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2593
2594 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2595 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2596 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2597 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2598
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002599 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2600 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2601 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2602 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2603 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2604
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002605 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2606 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002607 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2608 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002609
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002610Library
2611-------
2612
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002613- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2614 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2615
2616- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2617 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2618 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2619 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2620 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2621 See PEP 307 for details.
2622
2623- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2624 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2625
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002626- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2627 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002628 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002629 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2630 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002631 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002632
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002633- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2634 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2635
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002636- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2637 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2638 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2639
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002640- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2641
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002642- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2643 exception.
2644
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002645- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2646 class.
2647
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002648- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2649 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2650 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2651
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002652- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2653 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2654
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002655- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002656 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2657 See SF bug #659228.
2658
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002659- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2660 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2661 See SF patch #651082.
2662
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002663- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002664
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002665- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2666 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2667
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002668- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002669 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002670
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002671- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2672 DOS paths from other platforms.
2673
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002674Tools/Demos
2675-----------
2676
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002677- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2678 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2679 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2680 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2681 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2682 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2683 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2684 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2685 example:
2686
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002687 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2688 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002689
2690 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2691
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002692
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002693Build
2694-----
2695
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002696- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2697 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2698 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002699 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2700
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002701 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2702
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002703- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2704 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2705 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2706 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2707 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2708 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2709 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2710 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2711 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2712
2713- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2714 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2715 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2716 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2717
2718- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2719 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2720
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002721C API
2722-----
2723
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002724- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2725 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002726
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002727- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2728 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2729 tp_as_number pointer.
2730
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002731- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2732 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2733 (SF #681367)
2734
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002735- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2736 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2737 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2738 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002739
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002740Tests
2741-----
2742
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002743- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002744 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2745 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2746 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2747 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2748 pydoc.)
2749
2750- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2751
2752- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002753
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002754Windows
2755-------
2756
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002757- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2758 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2759 time).
2760
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002761- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2762 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2763
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002764- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2765 release without strong cryptography.
2766
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002767- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002768 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002769
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002770- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2771 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2772
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002773Mac
2774---
2775
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002776- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2777 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002778
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002779- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2780 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2781 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002782
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002783- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2784 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002785
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002786- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2787 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2788 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2789 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002790
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002791- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002792 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2793 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2794 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002795
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002796
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002797What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002798=================================
2799
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002800*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002801
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002802Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002803--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002804
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002805- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2806
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002807- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2808 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002809 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002810 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002811 a different meaning than before.
2812
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002813- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002814 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002815 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002816
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002817- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002818 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002819 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002820
2821- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2822 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2823 and deallocation.
2824
2825- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2826 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2827
2828- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2829 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2830 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2831 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2832 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2833
2834- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2835 now detected by the garbage collector.
2836
2837- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2838 [SF bug 519621]
2839
2840- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2841 identifier.
2842
2843- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2844 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2845 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2846 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2847 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2848 [SF bug 563060]
2849
2850- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2851 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2852 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2853 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2854 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2855
2856- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2857 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2858 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2859
2860- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2861
2862- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2863 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2864 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2865 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2866 state of the slots would be lost.)
2867
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002868Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002869-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002870
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002871- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002872 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
2873 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
2874 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
2875 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002876 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
2877 Jython 2.1.
2878
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002879- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002880 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002881 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
2882 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
2883 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
2884 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
2885 these, see PEP 302.
2886
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002887- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
2888 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2889 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2890
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002891- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2892 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2893 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2894
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002895- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2896 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2897 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2898
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002899- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2900 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2901 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2902 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2903 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2904 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2905 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2906 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2907 releases or implementations.
2908
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002909- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002910 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2911 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002912
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002913- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2914 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2915
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002916- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2917 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2918 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2919
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002920- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2921 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2922
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002923- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2924 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002925 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2926 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002927
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002928- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2929 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2930 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2931 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2932 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2933
2934 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2935 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2936 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2937 pattern.
2938
2939 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2940 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2941 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2942 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2943
2944 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2945 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2946 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2947 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2948 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2949 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2950
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002951- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2952 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2953 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2954 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2955 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
2956 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
2957 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
2958 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002959
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002960- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2961 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2962 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2963 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2964 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002965 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2966 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2967 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
2968 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
2969 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
2970 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
2971 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002972
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002973- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2974 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2975
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002976- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2977 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
2978 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
2979 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
2980 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
2981 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
2982 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
2983 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
2984 to Zack Weinberg!
2985
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00002986- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
2987 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
2988 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
2989 type. This has been fixed now.
2990
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00002991- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
2992 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
2993 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
2994
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002995- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
2996 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
2997 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
2998 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
2999 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3000 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3001 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3002 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003003 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003004
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003005- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3006 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3007 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003008
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003009- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3010 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3011 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3012 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3013 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3014 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3015 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3016 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003017 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003018 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3019 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3020
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003021- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3022 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3023 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3024 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3025 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3026 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3027 this.)
3028
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003029- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3030 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003031 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003032 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003033 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3034 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003035 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3036 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003037
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003038- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3039 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3040 currently running.
3041
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003042- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3043 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3044 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3045 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3046
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003047- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3048 as directory names.
3049
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003050- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3051 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3052
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003053- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3054 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3055
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003056- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003057 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3058 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003059
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003060- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3061 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3062 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3063 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3064 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3065
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003066- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3067 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3068 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3069 removed.
3070
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003071- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3072 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3073 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3074
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003075- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3076 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3077 to __debug__.
3078
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003079- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3080 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3081 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3082
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003083- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3084 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3085 deprecated now.
3086
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003087- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3088 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3089 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003090
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003091- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3092 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3093 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3094 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3095 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003096
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003097- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3098 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3099
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003100- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3101 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3102 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003103 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003104 is backward compatible.
3105
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003106- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3107 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3108 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3109 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3110 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3111
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003112- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3113 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3114 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3115 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3116 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3117 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003118
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003119- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3120 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3121
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003122- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3123 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3124
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003125- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3126 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3127 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3128 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3129 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3130
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003131- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3132 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3133 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3134
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003135- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003136 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3137
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003138- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3139 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3140 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003141
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003142- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3143 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3144
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003145- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3146 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3147 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3148
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003149- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3150
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003151Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003152-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003153
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003154- Added three operators to the operator module:
3155 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3156 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3157 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3158
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003159- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3160
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003161- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3162 archives.
3163
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003164- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3165 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3166 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3167
3168 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3169
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003170- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3171 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3172 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003173 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003174
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003175- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3176 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3177 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3178 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003179 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3180 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3181 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3182 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003183
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003184- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3185 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003186
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003187- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3188
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003189- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3190 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3191
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003192- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3193 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3194 supported.
3195
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003196- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3197
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003198- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3199 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003200
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003201- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3202 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3203
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003204- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3205
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003206- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3207 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3208
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003209- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3210 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3211 functions but callable type objects.
3212
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003213- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003214 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003215 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003216
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003217- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3218 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003219
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003220- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3221 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003222
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003223- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3224 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3225 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3226 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3227
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003228- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3229 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003230
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003231- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3232 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3233 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3234 and __imul__.
3235
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003236- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003237 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3238 is called.
3239
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003240- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3241 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3242 interpreter was compiled.
3243
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003244- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3245 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3246 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003247 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003248 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3249 1, not 2.
3250
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003251- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3252 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3253 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3254 limit.
3255
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003256- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3257 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3258 bug #623464.
3259
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003260- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3261 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3262 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3263 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3264
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003265Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003266-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003267
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003268- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3269
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003270- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3271 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3272 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3273 with Python 2.3a2.
3274
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003275- os.path exposes getctime.
3276
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003277- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003278 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003279 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003280 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003281 unit tests of floating point results.
3282
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003283- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3284 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3285 has been increased.
3286
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003287- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3288 executed.
3289
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003290- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3291 postinstallation script.
3292
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003293- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3294 test the current module.
3295
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003296- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003297 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3298 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3299 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3300 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3301
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003302- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003303 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003304 Ward's Optik package.
3305
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003306- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3307 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3308 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3309 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3310
3311- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3312 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003313 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003314
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003315- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3316 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3317 shelf are binary pickles.
3318
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003319- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3320 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3321
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003322- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3323 modules are iterators now.
3324
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003325- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3326 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3327 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3328 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3329 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3330 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003331
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003332- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3333 with their entity value.
3334
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003335- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3336
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003337- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3338 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003339
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003340- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3341 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003342 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003343
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003344- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3345 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3346 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3347 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3348 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3349 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3350 main():
3351
3352 import locale
3353 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3354
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003355- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3356 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3357
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003358- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3359 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3360 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3361 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3362 to the new standard.
3363
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003364- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3365 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3366 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3367 an extension to the database.
3368
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003369- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3370 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3371 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3372 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003373 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003374
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003375- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003376 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003377
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003378- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3379 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3380 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3381 bounded integers.
3382
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003383- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3384 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3385 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3386 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3387 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3388 in existence.
3389
3390 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3391 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3392 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3393 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3394 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3395 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3396
3397 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3398 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3399 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3400 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3401
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003402- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3403 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3404 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3405
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003406- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3407
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003408- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3409 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3410 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3411 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3412
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003413- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3414 argument.
3415
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003416- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3417 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3418 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3419 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3420 [SF patch 560794].
3421
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003422- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3423 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3424 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003425 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3426 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3427 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003428
3429- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3430 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003431
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003432- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3433 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3434 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3435 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003436
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003437- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3438 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3439 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3440 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3441 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3442
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003443- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003444
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003445- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3446
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003447- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3448 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3449 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3450 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3451 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3452 identical to None.
3453
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003454- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3455 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3456 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3457 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3458 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3459 results now.
3460
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003461- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3462 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3463
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003464- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3465 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3466 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3467 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3468 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3469 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3470 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3471 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3472
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003473- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3474
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003475- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3476 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3477
3478- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3479 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3480 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3481 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3482 and other systems.
3483
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003484- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3485 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3486 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3487 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 +00003488 work well with these.
3489
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003490- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3491
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003492- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003493 connections.
3494
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003495- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3496 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3497 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3498
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003499- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3500 sets
3501
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003502- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3503 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3504 name.
3505
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003506- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3507 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3508 passed in.
3509
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003510- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003511 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003512 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3513 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003514
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003515- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3516
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003517- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3518
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003519- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3520 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3521 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3522
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003523- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3524 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3525 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3526 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003527 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003528
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003529- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003530 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003531 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003532
3533- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3534 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3535 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3536
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003537- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003538 the value of its expression argument.
3539
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003540- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3541 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3542 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3543
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003544- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3545 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3546 skipstone browser was included.
3547
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003548- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3549 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3550
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003551Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003552-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003553
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003554- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3555 names in addition to accepting file names.
3556
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003557- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3558 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3559 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3560 still used and useful.)
3561
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003562- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3563 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3564 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3565 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003566
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003567- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3568 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3569 the generated binary.
3570
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003571Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003572-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003573
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003574- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3575
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003576- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3577 except in the hands of experts.
3578
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003579- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003580 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3581 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3582 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003583
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003584- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3585 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3586 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3587 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3588 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3589 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3590 builds.
3591
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003592- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3593 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3594 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3595 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3596 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3597 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3598 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3599 new type.
3600
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003601- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003602
3603 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3604 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3605 positive infinities.
3606
3607 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3608 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3609 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3610 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3611 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3612 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3613 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3614
3615 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3616
3617 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3618
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003619- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3620 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3621 size of the executable.
3622
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003623- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3624 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3625 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3626 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003627
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003628- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3629
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003630- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3631 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3632 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003633
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003634- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3635 well as Unix.
3636
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003637- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3638 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3639 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3640 modules in the README file for details.
3641
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003642C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003643-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003644
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003645- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3646 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003647 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003648 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003649 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003650
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003651- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3652 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3653 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3654 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3655 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3656 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003657 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003658 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3659 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3660 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3661 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3662 aligned.)
3663
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003664- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3665 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3666 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3667
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003668- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3669 level.
3670
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003671- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3672 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3673 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3674 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3675 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3676
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003677- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3678 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3679 code.
3680
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003681- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3682 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3683 adjusting for negative indices.
3684
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003685- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3686 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3687 object.
3688
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003689- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3690 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3691 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3692
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003693- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3694 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003695
3696- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3697
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003698- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3699 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3700 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3701 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3702
3703- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3704
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003705- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003706
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003707- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003708 without going through the buffer API.
3709
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003710- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003711
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003712- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3713 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3714 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3715 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3716
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003717- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3718 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3719
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003720- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003721 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3722
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003723New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003724-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003725
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003726- OpenVMS is now supported.
3727
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003728- AtheOS is now supported.
3729
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003730- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3731
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003732- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3733
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003734Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003735-----
3736
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003737- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3738 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3739 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003740
3741Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003742-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003743
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003744- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3745 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3746 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3747 bugs.
3748 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003749 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003750 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3751 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003752 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003753
3754- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003755 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003756
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003757- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3758 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3759
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003760- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3761 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003762 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003763 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3764
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003765- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3766 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3767 use files" uninstall option).
3768
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003769- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3770
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003771- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3772 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3773
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003774- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3775 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3776 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3777
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003778- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3779 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3780 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3781 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3782 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003783 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3784 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3785 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003786
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003787- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003788 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003789 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3790 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3791 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3792 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3793 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3794 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3795 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3796 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3797 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3798 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3799 work around.
3800
3801- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3802 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3803 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3804 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3805 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3806 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3807 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3808 specified with O_CREAT too).
3809
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003810Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003811----
3812
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003813- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003814
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003815- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3816 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3817 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3818
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003819- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3820 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3821 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3822
3823- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3824 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3825 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3826 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3827 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3828 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3829 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3830 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003831
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003832- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3833 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3834 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003835
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003836- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3837 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3838 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3839 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3840 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003841
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003842- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3843 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3844 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003845
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003846- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3847 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003848
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003849- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3850 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3851 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3852 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3853 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003854
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003855- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3856 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3857 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3858
3859- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3860 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3861 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003862
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003863- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3864 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3865 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3866 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003867 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003868
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003869- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
3870 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003871
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003872- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
3873 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003874
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003875- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00003876 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003877 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
3878 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003879
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003880
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003881What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003882===============================
3883
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003884*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
3885
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003886Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003887--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003888
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003889- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3890 with a custom metaclass.
3891
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003892Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003893-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003894
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003895- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3896 are proxies.
3897
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003898Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003899-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003900
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003901- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3902 very short strings.
3903
3904- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3905 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3906 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3907 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3908 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3909
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003910Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003911-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003912
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003913- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3914 close or delete time).
3915
3916- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3917 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3918
3919- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3920
3921- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003922 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003923
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003924Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003925-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003926
3927Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003928-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003929
3930C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003931-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003932
3933New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003934-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003935
3936Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003937-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003938
3939Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003940-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003941
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003942- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3943
3944- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3945 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3946
3947- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3948 deleted at process exit time.
3949
3950- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3951 in backslash.
3952
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003953Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003954----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003955
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003956- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
3957 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
3958 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3959
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003960
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003961What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003962===========================
3963
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003964*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3965
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003966Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003967--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003968
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003969- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
3970 been extensively updated. See
3971
3972 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3973
3974 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3975
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003976- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3977 deleted!
3978
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00003979- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
3980 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
3981 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
3982 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
3983 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
3984
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003985- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
3986
3987 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
3988 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
3989
3990 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
3991 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
3992 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
3993 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
3994 supported anyway.
3995
3996 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
3997 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
3998
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00003999- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4000 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4001 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4002 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4003 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004004
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004005- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4006 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4007 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4008
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004009Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004010-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004011
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004012- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4013 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4014 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4015 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4016 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4017 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004018 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4019 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4020 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4021 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004022
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004023- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4024 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4025 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4026
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004027Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004028-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004029
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004030- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4031
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004032Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004033-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004034
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004035- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4036 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4037 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4038 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4039 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4040 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4041
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004042- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4043
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004044- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4045
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004046- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4047
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004048- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4049 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4050 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4051
4052- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4053
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004054Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004055-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004056
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004057- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4058 off a search on Google.
4059
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004060Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004061-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004062
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004063- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4064 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4065 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4066 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4067 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4068 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4069 other platforms should do likewise.
4070
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004071- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4072 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4073 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4074
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004075C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004076-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004077
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004078- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4079 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4080 producing key-value pairs.
4081
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004082- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004083 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004084 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4085 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4086 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4087 previously went unchallenged.
4088
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004089New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004090-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004091
4092Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004093-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004094
4095Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004096-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004097
4098Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004099----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004100
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004101- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4102 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004103
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004104- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4105 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4106 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4107 home.
4108
4109
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004110What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004111===========================
4112
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004113*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4114
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004115Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004116--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004117
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004118- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4119 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004120
4121 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004122 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004123
4124 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4125 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004126 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004127 This needs to be documented.
4128
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004129- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4130 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4131
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004132- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4133 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4134 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4135
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004136- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4137 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4138
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004139- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4140 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4141 class forbids it).
4142
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004143- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4144 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4145 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4146
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004147- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4148
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004149Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004150-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004151
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004152- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4153 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004154 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004155
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004156- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4157 (like 1 + '').
4158
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004159Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004160-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004161
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004162- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4163 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4164 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4165 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004166 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004167 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4168
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004169- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4170 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4171 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4172 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4173
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004174- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4175 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004176 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4177 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4178 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004179
4180- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4181 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004182
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004183- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4184 bytes on its input.
4185
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004186Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004187-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004188
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004189- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004190 convenience function.
4191
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004192- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4193 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4194 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004195 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4196 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4197 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4198 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4199 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4200 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004201
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004202- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4203 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4204 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4205 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4206
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004207- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4208 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4209 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4210
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004211- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4212 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4213 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4214 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4215
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004216- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4217 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004218 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004219 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4220 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4221 new -l and -e options.
4222
4223- statcache is now deprecated.
4224
4225- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4226 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004227 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004228 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4229 time properly taken into account.
4230
4231- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4232 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4233 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4234 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4235
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004236Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004237-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004238
4239Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004240-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004241
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004242- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4243 is built with libdb3 if available.
4244
4245- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4246
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004247C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004248-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004249
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004250- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4251 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4252 PySequence_Size().
4253
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004254- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4255
4256- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4257 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4258 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4259
4260- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4261 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4262
4263- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4264 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4265
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004266New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004267-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004268
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004269- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4270 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4271
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004272- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4273 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4274
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004275- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4276
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004277Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004278-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004279
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004280- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4281 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4282
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004283Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004284-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004285
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004286Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004287----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004288
4289- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4290 removed completely in the next release.
4291
4292- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4293 OSX.
4294
4295- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4296 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4297
4298- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4299
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004300
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004301What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004302===========================
4303
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004304*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4305
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004306Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004307--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004308
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004309- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004310 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004311 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004312 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4313 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004314 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4315 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004316 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4317 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004318
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004319- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4320 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4321
4322- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4323 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4324
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004325Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004326-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004327
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004328- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4329 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4330 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4331 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4332 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4333 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4334 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4335 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4336
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004337- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4338 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4339 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4340 example).
4341
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004342- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004343 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004344 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004345 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004346
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004347- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4348 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4349 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004350 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004351
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004352- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4353 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4354 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4355 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4356 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4357 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4358
4359 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4360
4361 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4362
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004363Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004364-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004365
4366- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4367
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004368- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4369
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004370- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4371 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004372
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004373- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4374 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4375 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4376 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4377 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4378 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004379 attributes.
4380
4381- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4382 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4383 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004384
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004385- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4386 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4387 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004388
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004389- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4390 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4391 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004392 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4393 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4394
4395- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4396 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004397
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004398Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004399-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004400
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004401- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4402 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4403
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004404- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4405 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4406 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4407 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4408
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004409- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4410 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4411 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4412 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4413
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004414 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4415 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4416 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4417 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4418 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4419 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4420 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4421 without losing information).
4422
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004423- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004424 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4425 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4426 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4427 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4428 module).
4429
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004430 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004431 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4432 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4433 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4434 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004435
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004436- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004437 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4438 encoding.
4439
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004440- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4441 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4442
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004443- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004444 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4445
4446- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4447 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4448 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4449 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4450
4451- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4452
4453- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4454 ON, and OFF.
4455
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004456- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4457 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4458
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004459Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004460-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004461
4462- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4463 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4464 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004465
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004466- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4467 been added: -X and -E.
4468
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004469Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004470-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004471
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004472- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4473 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4474
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004475C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004476-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004477
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004478- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4479 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4480 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4481 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4482 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4483
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004484- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4485 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4486 as long) arguments.
4487
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004488- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4489 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4490 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4491 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4492 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4493 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4494
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004495- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4496 input.
4497
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004498New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004499-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004500
4501Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004502-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004503
4504Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004505-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004506
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004507- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4508 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4509 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4510
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004511- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4512 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4513 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004514 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004515
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004516 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4517 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4518 import signal
4519 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004520
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004521 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004522 while 1:
4523 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004524 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004525 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4526 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4527 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4528 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004529
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004530
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004531What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4532===========================
4533
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004534*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4535
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004536Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004537--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004538
4539- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4540 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4541 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4542
4543- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4544 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4545 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4546 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4547 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4548 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4549 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004550
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004551- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004552 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004553 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4554 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4555 associate a docstring with a property.
4556
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004557- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4558 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4559 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4560 other built-in object types.
4561
4562- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4563 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4564 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4565 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4566 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4567
4568- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4569 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4570
4571- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4572 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004573 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004574 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4575 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4576 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4577 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4578 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4579
4580- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4581 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4582 class.
4583
4584- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4585 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4586 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4587 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4588
4589- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4590 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4591 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4592 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4593
4594- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4595 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4596
4597- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4598 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4599 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4600 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4601 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004602 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004603 with the same value as s.
4604
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004605- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4606
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004607Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004608----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004609
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004610- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4611
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004612- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4613 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4614 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4615 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4616 objects.
4617
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004618- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4619 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004620 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4621 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4622
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004623- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4624 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4625 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4626
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004627Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004628-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004629
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004630- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4631 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4632 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4633 by the instances.
4634
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004635- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4636 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4637 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4638
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004639- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4640 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4641 before the entire comparison is complete.
4642
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004643- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4644 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4645 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4646
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004647- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4648 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4649 getwriter().
4650
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004651- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4652 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4653
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004654- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004655 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4656 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4657
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004658- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4659 iterable object.
4660
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004661- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4662 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004663
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004664- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4665 authentication.
4666
4667- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4668 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004669
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004670- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004671 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4672 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4673 a sample driver.)
4674
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004675Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004676-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004677
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004678- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4679 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4680 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4681 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4682 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4683 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4684 kernel has large file support.
4685
4686- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4687 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4688 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4689 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4690 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4691
4692- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4693 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4694 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4695
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004696C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004697-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004698
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004699- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4700 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4701
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004702New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004703-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004704
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004705- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4706 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4707
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004708Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004709-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004710
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004711- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4712 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4713 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4714 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4715 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4716
4717- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4718 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4719 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4720 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4721
4722- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4723 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4724
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004725Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004726-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004727
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004728- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004729 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4730 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004731
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004732
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004733What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4734===========================
4735
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004736*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4737
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004738Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004739----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004740
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004741- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4742 big to represent as a C double.
4743
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004744- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4745 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4746 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4747 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4748 restriction).
4749
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004750- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4751 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4752 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4753 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4754 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4755
4756 >>> dir([])
4757 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4758 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4759 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4760 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4761 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4762 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4763 'reverse', 'sort']
4764
4765 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4766
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004767- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004768 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4769 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4770 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4771 OverflowError exception.
4772
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004773- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004774 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004775 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4776 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4777 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4778 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4779 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004780 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004781 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4782 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4783
4784 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4785 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4786 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4787 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004788
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004789- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004790 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4791 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4792 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4793 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4794 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4795 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4796 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4797 once it is created.
4798
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004799- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4800 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4801 (key, value) pairs.
4802
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004803- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004804 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4805 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4806
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004807- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4808 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4809 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4810 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4811 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004812
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004813- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004814 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4815 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4816
4817 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4818
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004819- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004820 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4821
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004822Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004823-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004824
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004825- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004826 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4827 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004828
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004829- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4830 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4831 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4832 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4833 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4834 in this area anymore).
4835
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004836- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4837 threading.Timer.
4838
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004839- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4840 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4841
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004842- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004843 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4844
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004845- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004846 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4847 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4848 converted to Python longs.
4849
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004850- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004851 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4852
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004853- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4854 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4855 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4856
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004857Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004858-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004859
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004860- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4861 division operators as per PEP 238.
4862
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004863Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004864-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004865
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004866- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4867 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4868 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
4869 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
4870
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004871C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004872-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004873
4874- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004875
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004876- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
4877 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004878 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004879
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004880 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
4881 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004882 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004883 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004884
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004885- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004886 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
4887 module:
4888
4889 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004890
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004891 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4892 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004893
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004894 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4895 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004896
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004897 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4898
4899 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4900
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004901- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004902 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4903 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4904 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004905
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004906New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004907-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004908
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004909- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4910 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4911 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4912 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4913 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004914
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004915Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004916-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004917
4918Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004919-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004920
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004921- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4922 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4923 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4924 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004925 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4926 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4927 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4928 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4929 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004930
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004931- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004932 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4933
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004934
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004935What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4936===========================
4937
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004938*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4939
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004940Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004941-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004942
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004943- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4944 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4945
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004946- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4947 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4948 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004949
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004950- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4951 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4952 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4953 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004954
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004955- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
4956
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004957- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004958
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004959Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004960-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004961
4962- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004963 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004964 the module docstring for details.
4965
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004966Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004967-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004968
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004969- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004970 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
4971 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4972 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004973
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004974- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4975 Nick Mathewson.
4976
4977Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004978----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004979
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004980- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
4981 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
4982 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
4983 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
4984 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
4985 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
4986 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
4987 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
4988
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00004989- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
4990 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
4991 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
4992 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
4993
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00004994- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
4995 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
4996 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
4997 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
4998 come a long way).
4999
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005000- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5001 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5002 write filters for these warnings).
5003
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005004- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5005 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5006 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5007 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5008 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5009
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005010- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5011 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5012 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5013 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5014 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5015 older distribution.
5016
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005017Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005018-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005019
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005020- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5021 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005022 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005023
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005024- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5025 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5026 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5027
5028- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5029
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005030- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5031
5032- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5033
5034- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5035
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005036- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005037
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005038- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5039
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005040New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005041-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005042
5043C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005044-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005045
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005046- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5047 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5048 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5049 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5050 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5051 against buffer overruns.
5052
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005053- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005054 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5055 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005056 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5057 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5058 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5059
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005060- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5061 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5062 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5063 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5064 deprecated.
5065
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005066Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005067-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005068
5069- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5070 relevant is found.
5071
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005072
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005073What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005074===========================
5075
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005076*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5077
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005078Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005079----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005080
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005081- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5082 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5083 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5084 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5085 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5086 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5087 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5088 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005089 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005090 repaired.
5091
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005092- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005093 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005094 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5095 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5096 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5097 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5098 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5099 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5100 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5101 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5102
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005103- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5104 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5105 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5106 leading BMO character).
5107
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005108- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5109 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5110 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5111
5112 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5113 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5114 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005115
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005116 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5117 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5118 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5119 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5120 for various simple to use conversions.
5121
5122 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5123 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5124
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005125 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5126 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5127 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5128 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5129 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5130 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5131 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5132 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5133 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5134 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5135 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5136 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5137 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5138 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5139 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005140
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005141- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5142 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5143 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005144 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005145 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005146
5147 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005148 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5149 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5150 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5151 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5152 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005153 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5154 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005155
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005156 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5157 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5158 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005159 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005160
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005161- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5162 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5163 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5164 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5165 floating arithmetic,
5166
5167 x = 9007199254740992.0
5168 print long(x)
5169
5170 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5171 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5172 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5173 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5174 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5175 functions are of good quality).
5176
5177 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5178 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5179 algorithms to break.
5180
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005181- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5182 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5183 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5184 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5185 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5186 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5187 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5188 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5189 order.
5190
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005191- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5192 operation along the most common code paths.
5193
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005194- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5195 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5196
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005197- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5198 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5199 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5200 {}.update(UserDict())
5201
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005202- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5203 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5204 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5205 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5206 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5207 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5208 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5209 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5210
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005211- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005212 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005213
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005214 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005215 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5216 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005217 join() method of strings
5218 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005219 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5220 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005221 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005222 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005223
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005224- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5225 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5226
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005227- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5228 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5229
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005230- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5231 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5232 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5233 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5234
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005235- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5236 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005237 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005238 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5239 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005240
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005241- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5242
5243
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005244Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005245-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005246
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005247- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005248 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005249 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5250 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5251
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005252- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5253 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5254
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005255- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5256 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5257 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5258 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5259
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005260- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5261 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5262 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5263
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005264- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5265
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005266- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5267
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005268- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5269 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5270 that are still imported into string.py).
5271
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005272- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5273
5274- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5275 Now it does.
5276
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005277- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5278
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005279- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5280 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5281 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5282 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5283 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005284 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5285 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005286
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005287- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5288 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5289 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5290 'help(object)'.
5291
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005292Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005293-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005294
5295- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005296 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005297 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5298 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5299
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005300- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005301 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5302 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005303
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005304C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005305-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005306
5307- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5308 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005309
5310----
5311
5312**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**