blob: 196d7629ce7b07d887d2687e86a1729073628676 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +000015- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
16 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
17 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
18
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +000019- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
20 278.
21
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000022- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
23 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
24 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
25 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
26 to the base class has been moved the prroper nb_* magic slot and out of
27 PyNumber_*().
28 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
29
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +000030- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
31 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
32 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
33 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
34
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +000035- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
36 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
37 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
38 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
39 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
40
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +000041- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
42 disabled caused a crash.
43
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000044- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
45 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
46
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000047- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
48 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
49
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +000050- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
51
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000052- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +000053 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
54 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
55 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000056
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +000057- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
58
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +000059- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
60 returning None.
61
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +000062- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
63 ('\') with a specific error message.
64
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +000065- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
66
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +000067- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
68 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
69
Martin v. Löwis13a1fde2005-01-27 18:56:16 +000070- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +000071 an ferror() call.
72
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000073- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
74 list.sort().
75
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +000076- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
77 (2+3) --> (5).
78
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +000079- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
80
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +000081- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
82 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000083
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +000084- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
85 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
86 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
87
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000088Extension Modules
89-----------------
90
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +000091- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
92 if available on the platform.
93
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +000094- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
95 available on the platform.
96
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000097- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
98 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
99
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000100- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
101
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000102- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
103 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
104 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
105
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000106- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
107
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000108- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
109 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
110
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000111- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
112 file size.
113
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000114- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
115
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000116- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
117 {remove_history,replace_history}
118
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000119- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
120 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000121
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000122- stat_float_times is now True.
123
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000124- array.array objects are now picklable.
125
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000126- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
127 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
128
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000129- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
130 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
131 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
132
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000133- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
134 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000135
136Library
137-------
138
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000139- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
140 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
141 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
142 class at all.
143
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000144- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
145 files to PyPI.
146
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000147- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
148 them to PyPI.
149
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000150- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
151 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
152 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
153 work as expected.
154
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000155- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
156 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
157
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000158- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
159 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
160
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000161- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
162
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000163- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
164 to build.
165
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000166- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
167 symbolic links on Windows.
168
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000169- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
170 profile.py if available.
171
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000172- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
173
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000174- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
175 in LWPCookieJar.
176
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000177- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
178
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000179- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
180
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000181- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
182
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000183- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
184
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000185- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
186
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000187- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
188
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000189- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
190
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000191- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
192
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000193- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
194 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
195 be exploited in various ways.
196
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000197- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
198
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000199- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
200
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000201- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
202
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000203- Enhancements to the csv module:
204
205 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
206 reflecting it's capabilities, and improving it's compliance with
207 PEP 305.
208 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
209 reporting.
210 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
211 dictates.
212 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000213 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000214 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000215 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
216 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000217 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
218 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000219 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000220 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
221 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
222 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
223 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
224 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
225 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
226 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
227 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
228 without first creating a dialect class.
229 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
230 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
231 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000232 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000233 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
234 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000235 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
236 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
237 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
238 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000239 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
240 This has been fixed.
241
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000242- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
243 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
244 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
245 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
246
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000247- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
248
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000249- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
250 (Bug #951915).
251
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000252- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
253 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
254 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
255 encoding alias table
256
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000257- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
258
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000259- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
260 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
261
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000262- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
263
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000264- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
265
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000266- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
267
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000268- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
269
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000270- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
271
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000272- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
273 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
274 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
275
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000276- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000277 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000278
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000279- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
280 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
281 tokenizer with very long source lines.
282
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000283- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
284 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
285
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000286- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
287 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000288
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000289- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
290 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
291
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000292- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
293 correctly.
294
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000295- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
296 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
297 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
298 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
299 between two lines.
300
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000301
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000302Build
303-----
304
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000305- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
306 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
307 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000308 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000309
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000310- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
311 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
312 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
313
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000314- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
315
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000316- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
317 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
318
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000319- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
320 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
321 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
322 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
323 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
324 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
325 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
326 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
327
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000328- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
329 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
330 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
331 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
332
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000333
334C API
335-----
336
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000337- Removed PyRange_New().
338
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000339
340Tests
341-----
342
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000343- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000344
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000345
346Documentation
347-------------
348
349- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
350 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
351 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
352
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000353Mac
354---
355
356
357
358Tools/Demos
359-----------
360
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000361- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000362
363
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000364What's New in Python 2.4 final?
365===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000366
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000367*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000368
369Core and builtins
370-----------------
371
372- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
373 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
374 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
375
376
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000377What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
378==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000379
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000380*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000381
382Core and builtins
383-----------------
384
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000385- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
386 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
387 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
388
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000389
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000390Library
391-------
392
393- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
394 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
395 raised is re-raised.
396
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000397- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
398 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
399
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000400- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
401 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
402 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
403 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
404 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
405 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
406 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
407 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
408 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
409 by the slice are recomputed now.
410
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000411- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000412
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000413Build
414-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000415
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000416- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
417 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
418 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000419
420C API
421-----
422
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000423- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
424
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000425
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000426What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
427================================
428
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000429*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000430
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000431License
432-------
433
434The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
435is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
436changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
437Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
438intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
439durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
440the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
441License::
442
443 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
444
445says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
446to Python 2.1.1.
447
448The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
449License Version 2.
450
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000451Core and builtins
452-----------------
453
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000454- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
455 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
456 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
457 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
458 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
459 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
460 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
461 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
462 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
463 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
464
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000465- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000466
467Extension Modules
468-----------------
469
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000470- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
471 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
472 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
473 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000474
475Library
476-------
477
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000478- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
479 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
480 returned.
481
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000482- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
483
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000484- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
485 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
486
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000487- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
488
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000489- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
490 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000491
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000492- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
493
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000494- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
495
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000496- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000497 the source code is updated and reloaded.
498
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000499Build
500-----
501
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000502- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000503
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000504What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
505================================
506
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000507*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000508
509Core and builtins
510-----------------
511
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000512- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000513 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
514
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000515- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
516 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
517 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
518 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
519
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000520- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
521 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
522
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000523- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
524 constant.
525
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000526- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
527 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
528 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
529 large), and to anomalies such as
530 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
531 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
532 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
533 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000534
535Extension modules
536-----------------
537
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000538- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
539 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000540 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
541 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
542 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000543
544Library
545-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000546
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000547- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000548 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000549 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
550 --swig-cpp.
551
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000552- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
553 it is set.
554
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000555- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000556
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000557- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
558 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
559 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
560 Closes bug #1039270.
561
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000562- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000563
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000564 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000565 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
566 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
567 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
568 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
569 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
570 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
571 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
572 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
573 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
574 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
575 + Updates to documentation.
576
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000577- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
578 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
579 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
580 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
581
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000582- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000583
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000584- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
585 applications should use the getmember function.
586
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000587- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
588
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000589- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
590 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
591 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
592 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
593 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
594 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
595 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
596 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
597 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
598
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000599- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
600 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000601 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000602
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000603- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
604 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
605 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
606 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
607 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
608 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
609 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
610 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000611
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000612- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
613 the new public features (of which there are many).
614
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000615- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000616 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
617 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
618 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
619 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000620 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000621
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000622- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
623
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000624- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
625 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
626 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
627 options.
628
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000629- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
630 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
631 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
632 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
633 conditions under which non-string values work.
634
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000635Build
636-----
637
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000638- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
639 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
640 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
641
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000642- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
643 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
644 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
645 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
646 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000647
648C API
649-----
650
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000651- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
652 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
653
654- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
655
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000656- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
657 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
658 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
659 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
660 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
661 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
662 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
663 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
664 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
665
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000666- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
667
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000668- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
669 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
670 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000671
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000672Tests
673-----
674
675- test__locale ported to unittest
676
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000677Mac
678---
679
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000680- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
681 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
682 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000683
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000684Tools/Demos
685-----------
686
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000687- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
688 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
689 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
690 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
691 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000692
693
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000694What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
695=================================
696
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000697*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000698
699Core and builtins
700-----------------
701
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000702- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000703 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
704
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000705- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
706 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
707 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
708 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
709 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
710 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
711 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
712 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000713 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
714 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
715 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
716 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
717 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000718
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000719- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
720 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
721 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
722 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
723 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
724
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000725- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
726
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000727- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
728 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
729
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000730- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
731 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
732 modified the list.
733
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000734- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
735 functions is now writable.
736
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000737- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
738 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
739 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
740 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
741
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000742- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
743 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
744 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
745 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
746 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000747
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000748- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
749 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
750
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000751Extension modules
752-----------------
753
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000754- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
755
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000756- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
757 data.
758
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000759- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
760 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
761 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
762 supposed to have been truncated away.
763
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000764- Added socket.socketpair().
765
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000766- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
767 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
768
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000769- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000770 versions of Python, have now been removed.
771
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000772Library
773-------
774
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000775- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000776 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000777
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000778- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
779 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
780
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000781- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
782 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
783
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000784- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
785
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000786- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
787 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000788
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000789- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
790 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
791
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000792- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
793
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000794- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
795
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000796- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
797
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000798- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
799 Percivall.
800
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000801- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
802 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
803
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000804- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
805 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
806 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000807 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000808
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000809- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
810 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
811 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
812 and exponent.
813
814- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
815
816- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
817 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
818 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
819
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000820- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
821 to the readline module.
822
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000823- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000824 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
825 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000826
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000827- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
828 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
829 contains symlinks.
830
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000831- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
832 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
833
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000834- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
835 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
836 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
837
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000838- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
839 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
840 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
841 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
842 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
843 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
844 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
845 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
846 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
847 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
848 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
849 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
850 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
851
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000852- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
853
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000854Tools/Demos
855-----------
856
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000857- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
858 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
859
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000860- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
861
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000862Build
863-----
864
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000865- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
866 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
867 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
868 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
869 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
870 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
871 plans to do so.
872
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000873- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
874 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
875
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000876- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
877 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
878
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000879- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
880 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
881
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000882- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
883 GNU/k*BSD systems.
884
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000885- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
886 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
887
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000888C API
889-----
890
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000891..
892
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000893Documentation
894-------------
895
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000896- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
897 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
898
899- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
900 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
901 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000902
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000903New platforms
904-------------
905
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000906- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
907
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000908Tests
909-----
910
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000911..
912
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000913Windows
914-------
915
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000916- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
917 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
918 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
919 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
920 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
921 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
922 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
923 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
924 the problem.
925
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000926Mac
927---
928
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000929..
930
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000931
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000932What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
933=================================
934
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000935*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000936
937Core and builtins
938-----------------
939
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000940- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
941 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
942 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
943 sensitive code.
944
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000945- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000946 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000947
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000948 @staticmethod
949 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000950
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000951 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000952
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000953- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
954 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
955 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
956 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
957 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
958 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
959 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
960 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
961 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
962 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
963 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
964
965 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
966 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
967 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
968 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
969 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
970 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
971 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
972
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000973- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
974 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
975
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000976- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000977 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000978
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000979- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000980 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000981 which was missing for no apparent reason.
982
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000983- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000984 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
985 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
986
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000987- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
988 types that support garbage collection.
989
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000990- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
991
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000992- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
993 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
994 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
995 Jython.
996
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000997- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
998
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000999- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1000 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1001
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001002- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1003 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1004 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001005
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001006- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1007 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1008 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1009
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001010Extension modules
1011-----------------
1012
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001013- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1014
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001015Library
1016-------
1017
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001018- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1019 TIS-620
1020
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001021- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1022 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1023 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1024 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1025 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1026 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1027 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1028 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1029 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1030 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1031
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001032- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1033
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001034- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1035 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1036 same as when the argument is omitted).
1037 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1038
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001039- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1040
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001041- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1042 schemes are offered.
1043
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001044- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1045
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001046- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1047 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1048 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1049
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001050- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1051
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001052- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1053 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1054
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001055- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1056 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1057 when dummy_threading is being used.
1058
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001059- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1060 from a tarfile.
1061
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001062- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001063 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001064
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001065- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1066 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1067 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1068 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1069
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001070- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1071 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1072
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001073- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1074 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1075 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1076 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1077 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1078 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1079 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1080 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1081 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1082 by some other method in progress).
1083
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001084- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1085 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1086 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001087
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001088- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1089
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001090- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1091 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1092 AM Kuchling.
1093
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001094- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1095 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1096 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1097
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001098- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1099 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1100 instead of unsigned.
1101
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001102- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001103 no longer part of the public API.
1104
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001105- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1106 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1107 string methods of the same name).
1108
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001109- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001110 SF patch 945642.
1111
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001112- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1113
1114 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1115
1116 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1117 DocTestSuites.
1118
1119- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1120 that provide thread-local data.
1121
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001122- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1123 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1124
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001125- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1126
1127- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1128 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1129 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1130
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001131- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1132
1133 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1134 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1135 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001136
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001137 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1138 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1139 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1140 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1141
1142 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1143 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1144
1145 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1146 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1147 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1148 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1149
1150 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1151 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1152 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1153 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1154 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1155
1156 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1157 wrapping help output.
1158
1159 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1160 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1161 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001162
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001163C API
1164-----
1165
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001166- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1167 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1168 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1169 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1170 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1171 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1172 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1173 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1174 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1175 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1176 its visible semantics have not changed.
1177
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001178- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1179 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1180
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001181Documentation
1182-------------
1183
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001184- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001185
1186 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001187 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001188
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001189 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001190
1191 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1192
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001193- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001194
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001195Tests
1196-----
1197
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001198- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001199 platforms that use the Makefile.
1200
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001201- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1202 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1203 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1204
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001205
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001206What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1207=================================
1208
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001209*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001210
1211Core and builtins
1212-----------------
1213
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001214- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1215 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1216 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1217 objects now (one object instead of three).
1218
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001219- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1220 Windows DLLs.
1221
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001222- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1223 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001224
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001225- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1226 a new .pyc magic.
1227
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001228- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1229 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1230 be there.
1231
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001232- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1233 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1234 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1235
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001236- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1237 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1238 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1239
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001240- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1241
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001242- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1243 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1244 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001245
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001246- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1247 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1248
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001249- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1250
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001251- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001252 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001253
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001254- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1255
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001256- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1257
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001258- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1259 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1260
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001261- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1262 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1263 Fixes bug #858016 .
1264
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001265- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1266 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1267 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1268
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001269- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1270 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1271 improves their performance (about 35%).
1272
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001273- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1274 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1275 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1276
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001277- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1278 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1279 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1280 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1281
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001282- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1283 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001284 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001285 length is not known).
1286
1287- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1288 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001289 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1290 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001291 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1292
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001293- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1294 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1295
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001296- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1297 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1298 keyword arguments.
1299
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001300- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1301 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1302 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1303
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001304- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1305 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1306 cases.
1307
1308- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1309 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1310 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1311 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1312 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1313 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1314 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1315 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1316 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1317 a release build.
1318
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001319- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1320 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1321
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001322- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001323 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001324
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001325- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1326 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1327 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1328 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1329 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1330 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1331 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1332 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1333 destroyed.
1334
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001335- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1336 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1337 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1338 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1339 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1340 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1341 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1342 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1343
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001344- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1345 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1346 character other than a space.
1347
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001348- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1349 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1350 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1351 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1352 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1353 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1354 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1355 attributes with the same name.
1356
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001357- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1358 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1359 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1360 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1361 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1362 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1363 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1364 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1365 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1366 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1367 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1368 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1369 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1370 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001371
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001372- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1373 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1374 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1375 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1376 This has been repaired.
1377
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001378- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1379
1380- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1381
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001382- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1383 over a sequence.
1384
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001385- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001386 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001387
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001388- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1389
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001390- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1391 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1392 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1393 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1394 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1395 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1396 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1397 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1398
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001399- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1400 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1401 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1402
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001403- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1404 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1405 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1406 freelist.
1407
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001408- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1409 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1410
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001411- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1412 number.
1413
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001414- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1415 a TypeError exception.
1416
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001417- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1418 820195.
1419
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001420- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1421 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1422 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1423
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001424- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001425 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1426 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001427
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001428- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1429 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1430 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1431
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001432- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1433 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001434 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001435
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001436- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001437 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1438 the first call.
1439
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001440
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001441Extension modules
1442-----------------
1443
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001444- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1445 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1446
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001447- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1448 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1449 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1450 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1451 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1452 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1453 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001454
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001455- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1456
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001457- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1458
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001459- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1460 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1461
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001462- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1463 fewer false positives.
1464
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001465- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1466 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1467
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001468- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001469 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1470
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001471- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001472 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001473 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001474 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1475 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001476
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001477- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1478 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1479 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1480 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1481
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001482- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1483 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1484 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1485 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1486 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1487 #897625.
1488
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001489- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1490 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1491
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001492- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1493 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1494 and pops on either side of the deque.
1495
1496- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1497 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1498
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001499- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1500 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1501 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1502 other functions that expect a function argument.
1503
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001504- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1505
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001506- os.getsid was added.
1507
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001508- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1509 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1510 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1511
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001512- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1513
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001514- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1515
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001516- readline.clear_history was added.
1517
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001518- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1519
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001520- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1521
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001522- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1523
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001524- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1525
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001526- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1527
1528- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1529
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001530- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1531
1532- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1533
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001534- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1535 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1536 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1537
1538- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1539 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1540 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1541 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1542 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1543 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1544 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1545
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001546- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1547 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1548 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1549 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001550
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001551- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001552 iterators from a single iterable.
1553
1554- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1555 of raising a TypeError exception.
1556
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001557- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1558 as parameter.
1559
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001560Library
1561-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001562
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001563- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1564 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1565 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001566
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001567- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1568 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1569 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001570
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001571- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001572
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001573- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1574 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001575
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001576- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1577 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1578
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001579- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1580
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001581- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001582 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001583
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001584- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001585 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001586
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001587- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1588
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001589- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1590 on cygwin and mingw32.
1591
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001592- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1593
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001594- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1595 module.
1596
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001597- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1598 installation scheme for all platforms.
1599
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001600- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001601 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001602
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001603- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1604 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1605 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1606
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001607- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1608 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1609 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1610
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001611- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1612
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001613- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1614
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001615- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1616 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1617
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001618- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1619 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1620 type pattern with the same value exists.
1621
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001622- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1623 when run from the command prompt).
1624
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001625- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1626 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1627
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001628- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1629 default sort).
1630
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001631- Added global runctx function to profile module
1632
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001633- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1634
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001635- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1636
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001637- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1638
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001639- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001640 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1641 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1642 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1643 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1644 accordingly.
1645
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001646- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1647 decoding standards.
1648
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001649- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1650 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1651 called for all requests.
1652
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001653- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1654 they are passed to the compiler.
1655
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001656- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1657 indent, width and depth.
1658
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001659- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1660 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1661
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001662- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1663 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1664
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001665- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1666
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001667- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1668
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001669- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1670
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001671- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1672 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1673
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001674- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001675 for better performance.
1676
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001677- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001678
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001679- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1680 a string).
1681
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001682- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1683
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001684- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1685
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001686- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1687
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001688- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1689
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001690- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1691 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1692 list of fieldnames.
1693
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001694- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1695 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1696
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001697- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1698
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001699- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1700 empty lists.
1701
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001702- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1703 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1704 and shelves.
1705
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001706- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1707 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1708
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001709- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001710 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1711 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001712
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001713- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1714 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001715 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001716
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001717- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001718 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1719 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1720
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001721- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1722 and removed in Py2.4.
1723
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001724- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1725
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001726- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1727
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001728Tools/Demos
1729-----------
1730
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001731- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1732 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1733
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001734- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1735
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001736- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1737 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1738 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1739 destination in situations where both files are given.
1740
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001741- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1742 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1743 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1744 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1745
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001746- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1747
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001748- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1749 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1750 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1751 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1752 now.
1753
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001754- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1755 in effect
1756
1757- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1758 C-c C-h
1759
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001760- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1761 -d option was given.
1762
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001763Build
1764-----
1765
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001766- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1767 build under OS X.
1768
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001769- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1770 --enable-profiling.
1771
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001772- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1773 is configured --with-tsc.
1774
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001775- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1776 on AMD64.
1777
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001778- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1779 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1780
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001781- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1782 removed.
1783
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001784- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1785 supported (see PEP 11).
1786
1787- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1788
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001789- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1790
1791- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1792 (see PEP 11).
1793
1794- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1795 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1796
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001797C API
1798-----
1799
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001800- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1801 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1802 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1803
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001804- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1805 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1806 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1807 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1808
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001809- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1810 generator objects.
1811
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001812- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1813 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001814 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1815 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001816
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001817- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1818 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1819
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001820- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1821 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1822 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1823 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1824 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1825
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001826- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1827 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1828 about 10% faster.
1829
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001830- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1831 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1832
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001833- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1834 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1835 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1836 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1837
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001838Windows
1839-------
1840
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001841- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1842 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1843 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1844 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1845
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001846- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1847 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1848 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1849
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001850
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001851What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1852===============================
1853
1854*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1855
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001856IDLE
1857----
1858
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001859- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1860 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1861 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1862 context-menu actions.
1863
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001864- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1865 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1866 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1867 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1868 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1869 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1870 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1871 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1872 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1873
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001874
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001875What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1876=============================================
1877
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001878*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001879
1880Core and builtins
1881-----------------
1882
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001883- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001884 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001885 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1886
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001887Extension modules
1888-----------------
1889
1890- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1891 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1892 than once. This has been fixed.
1893
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001894- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1895 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1896 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1897 call.
1898
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001899- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1900
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001901Library
1902-------
1903
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001904- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1905 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1906
1907- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1908 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1909 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1910 restored.
1911
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001912IDLE
1913----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001914
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001915- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001916
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001917Build
1918-----
1919
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001920- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1921 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1922
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001923C API
1924-----
1925
1926Windows
1927-------
1928
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001929- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1930 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1931
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001932- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1933
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001934Mac
1935---
1936
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001937- Various fixes to pimp.
1938
1939- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1940
1941- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1942 more problems than it solves.
1943
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001944
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001945What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1946=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001947
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001948*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1949
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001950Core and builtins
1951-----------------
1952
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001953- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1954 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1955
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001956- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1957 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001958 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001959
1960- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1961 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1962 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001963 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001964
1965- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1966 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001967
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001968- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1969 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1970 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1971
1972- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001973 770247.
1974
1975- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001976
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001977Extension modules
1978-----------------
1979
1980- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1981 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1982
1983- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1984
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001985- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1986
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001987- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1988 contained within the _strptime module.
1989
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001990- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1991 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1992
1993- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001994 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1995
1996- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1997 the find_class attribute, if present.
1998
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001999- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002000
2001 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2002 (SF bug 763298).
2003
2004 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002005 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2006 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2007 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002008
2009 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2010
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002011Library
2012-------
2013
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002014- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2015
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002016- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2017 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2018 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2019 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2020 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2021 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2022 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2023 or Tester().
2024
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002025- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2026 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2027 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2028 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2029 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2030 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2031 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2032 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2033 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002034
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002035 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002036
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002037- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2038 weren't before was an oversight.
2039
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002040- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2041 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2042
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002043- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2044 when there are no lines.
2045
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002046- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2047 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2048
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002049- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2050 to child processes.
2051
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002052- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2053
2054- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2055
2056- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2057 xmlrpclib.
2058
2059- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2060 responses.
2061
2062- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2063 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2064
2065- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2066 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2067 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2068
2069- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2070 used as patterns.
2071
2072- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2073 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2074 than Tk 8.3.
2075
2076- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2077
2078- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002079
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002080Tools/Demos
2081-----------
2082
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002083- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2084
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002085- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2086
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002087- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002088
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002089Build
2090-----
2091
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002092- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2093
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002094- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2095
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002096- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2097 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002098
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002099- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2100 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2101 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002102
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002103C API
2104-----
2105
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002106- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2107 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2108
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002109Windows
2110-------
2111
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002112- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2113 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2114 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2115 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2116 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2117 Python exception ::
2118
2119 thread.error: can't start new thread
2120
2121 is raised now.
2122
2123- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2124 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2125 instead of from DLL teardown.
2126
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002127Mac
2128---
2129
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002130- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002131 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002132 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2133 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2134 the executable in the bundle.
2135
2136- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002137
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002138- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2139
2140- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2141 on Panther.
2142
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002143What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2144================================
2145
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002146*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002147
2148Core and builtins
2149-----------------
2150
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002151- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2152 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2153 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2154 with the -i option.
2155
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002156- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2157 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2158
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002159- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2160 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2161
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002162- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2163 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2164 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2165 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2166 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2167 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2168 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2169 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2170 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2171 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2172 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2173 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2174 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002175
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002176- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2177 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2178 embedded in a lambda expression.
2179
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002180- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2181 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2182 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2183 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2184 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2185
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002186- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2187 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2188 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2189
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002190- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2191 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2192
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002193- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2194 It's writable again.
2195
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002196- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2197 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2198 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002199 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002200
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002201- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2202 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2203 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2204
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002205Extension modules
2206-----------------
2207
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002208- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2209 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2210
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002211- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2212 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2213 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2214 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2215
2216- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2217 collection.
2218
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002219- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2220 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2221 unique within a single program run.
2222
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002223- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2224 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2225
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002226- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2227 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2228
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002229- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2230 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002231
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002232- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2233
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002234- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2235 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2236
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002237- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2238 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2239 for many BSD-derived systems.
2240
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002241
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002242Library
2243-------
2244
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002245- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2246 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2247 primary ones:
2248
2249 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2250 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2251 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2252
2253 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2254 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2255 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2256 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2257 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2258 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2259
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002260- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2261 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2262 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2263 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2264 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2265 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2266 argument.
2267
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002268- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2269 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2270 in the archive.
2271
2272- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2273 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2274
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002275- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2276 569574).
2277
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002278- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2279 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2280 no more.
2281
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002282- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2283 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2284 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2285 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2286 code coverage.
2287
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002288- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2289 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2290 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002291 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2292 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002293
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002294- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2295 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2296 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002297 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002298
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002299- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2300
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002301- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2302 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2303 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2304 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2305
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002306- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2307 handling.
2308
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002309- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2310 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2311
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002312- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2313 in socket.py.
2314
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002315- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2316
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002317- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2318 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2319 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2320 opener with proxy support.
2321
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002322- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2323
2324- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2325
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002326Tools/Demos
2327-----------
2328
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002329- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2330
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002331- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2332
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002333- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2334 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002335
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002336- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2337 files.
2338
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002339Build
2340-----
2341
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002342- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002343 different root directory.
2344
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002345C API
2346-----
2347
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002348- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2349 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2350 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2351 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2352 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2353 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2354 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2355 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2356 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2357 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2358
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002359- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2360 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2361 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2362 from Python.
2363
2364
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002365New platforms
2366-------------
2367
2368None this time.
2369
2370Tests
2371-----
2372
2373- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2374 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2375
2376Windows
2377-------
2378
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002379- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2380
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002381- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2382 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2383 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2384 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2385 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2386 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2387 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2388 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2389 that's what it's for.
2390
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002391Mac
2392---
2393
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002394- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2395 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2396 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2397 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002398- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2399 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2400- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002401
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002402SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2403------------------------------------
2404
2405430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2406598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2407622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2408661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2409683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2410697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2411713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2412724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2413727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2414729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2415730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2416731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2417732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2418733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2419735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2420740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2421744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2422745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2423747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2424749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2425751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2426753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2427755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2428757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2429760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2430
2431
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002432What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2433================================
2434
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002435*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002436
2437Core and builtins
2438-----------------
2439
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002440- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2441 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2442
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002443- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2444 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2445 and cannot be strings).
2446
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002447- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2448 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2449 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2450 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2451
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002452- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2453 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2454 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2455 Python itself.
2456
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002457- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2458 the referenced object, if it has one.
2459
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002460- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2461 the thread started at
2462 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2463
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002464- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2465 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2466 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2467 placed on a list index.
2468
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002469- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2470 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2471 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2472 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2473
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002474- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2475 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2476 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2477 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2478 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2479 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2480 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2481
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002482- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2483 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2484 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2485 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2486 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2487
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002488- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2489 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002490
2491- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2492 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2493 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2494 #693195.)
2495
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002496- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2497 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002498
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002499- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002500 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002501 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2502 interpreter executions, would fail.
2503
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002504- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002505 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002506 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002507
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002508Extension modules
2509-----------------
2510
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002511- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2512 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2513 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2514 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2515
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002516- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2517 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2518
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002519- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2520 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2521 and Greg Chapman.)
2522
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002523- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2524 recursively.
2525
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002526- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002527 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2528 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2529 leaks.
2530
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002531- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2532
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002533- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2534 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2535 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2536 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2537 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2538 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2539 #705836.
2540
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002541- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002542 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2543
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002544- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2545 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2546 See SF bug #692416.
2547
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002548- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2549 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2550
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002551- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2552 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2553 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002554
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002555- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002556 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2557 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2558
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002559- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2560 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2561 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2562 timeouts to work properly.
2563
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002564Library
2565-------
2566
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002567- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2568 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2569 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2570 future release.
2571
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002572- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2573 for querying platform dependent features.
2574
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002575- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002576
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002577- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2578 pickle protocol versions.
2579
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002580- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2581 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2582 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2583
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002584- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2585
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002586- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2587 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2588 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2589 modules.
2590
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002591- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2592 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2593 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2594
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002595- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2596 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2597
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002598- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2599 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2600 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2601
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002602- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002603 MS Office extensions.
2604
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002605- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2606 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2607
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002608- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2609 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2610
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002611- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2612 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2613 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2614 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2615 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2616 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2617
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002618- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2619 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2620 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002621
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002622- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2623 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2624 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2625
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002626- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2627
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002628- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2629 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2630 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2631
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002632Tools/Demos
2633-----------
2634
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002635- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2636 See the module docstring for details.
2637
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002638Build
2639-----
2640
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002641- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2642 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002643
2644C API
2645-----
2646
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002647- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2648
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002649- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2650 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2651 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2652
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002653- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2654 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002655
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002656 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2657 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2658 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002659
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002660- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002661 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2662
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002663- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2664 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2665 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002666
2667New platforms
2668-------------
2669
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002670None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002671
2672Tests
2673-----
2674
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002675- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2676 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002677
2678Windows
2679-------
2680
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002681- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2682 function.
2683
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002684- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2685 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002686
2687Mac
2688---
2689
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002690- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2691 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002692
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002693- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2694 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002695
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002696- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2697 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2698 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002699
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002700- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002701 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2702 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002703
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002704- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2705 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002706
2707
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002708What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2709=================================
2710
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002711*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002712
2713Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002714-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002715
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002716- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2717 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2718 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2719
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002720- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2721 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2722 (SF patch #664376.)
2723
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002724- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2725 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2726 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2727 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2728 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2729 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002730 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002731
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002732- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2733 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2734 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2735 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002736 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002737
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002738- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2739 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2740 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2741 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2742 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2743 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2744 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2745 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2746 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2747 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2748 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2749
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002750- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2751 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2752 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2753 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2754 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2755 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2756
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002757- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2758 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2759
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002760- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2761 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2762 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2763 case.)
2764
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002765- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2766 passed as unicode strings.
2767
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002768- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2769 See SF bug #683467.
2770
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002771- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2772 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2773
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002774- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2775
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002776- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2777
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002778- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2779 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2780 arguments.
2781
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002782- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2783 See SF bug #667147.
2784
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002785- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002786 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002787 See SF bug #676155.
2788
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002789- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002790 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002791 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2792 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2793 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2794 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2795 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2796 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002797
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002798Extension modules
2799-----------------
2800
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002801- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2802 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2803 tp_as_number pointer.
2804
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002805- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2806 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2807 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2808 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2809 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2810
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002811- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2812
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002813- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2814
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002815- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002816 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002817 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2818 patch #678531.)
2819
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002820- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2821 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2822
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002823- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2824 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2825
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002826- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2827
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002828- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2829 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2830 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2831
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002832- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2833
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002834- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2835 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2836
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002837- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002838
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002839- datetime changes:
2840
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002841 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2842
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002843 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2844 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2845 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2846 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2847 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2848 now.
2849
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002850 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002851 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2852 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002853
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002854 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002855 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002856 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2857 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2858 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2859 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002860
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002861 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2862 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2863 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002864 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2865
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002866 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2867 by a later example coded by Guido.
2868
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002869 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002870 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2871 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2872 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002873 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2874 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2875
2876 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2877 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2878 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2879 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2880 tzinfo subclass instance.
2881
2882 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2883 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2884 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2885 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2886 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2887 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2888 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2889 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002890
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002891 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2892 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2893 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2894 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2895 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002896 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2897
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002898 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002899
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002900 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2901 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2902 as a naive datetime object.
2903
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002904 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2905 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2906 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2907
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002908 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2909 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2910 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2911 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2912 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2913 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2914 comparison.
2915
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002916 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2917 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2918 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2919 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002920 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002921
2922 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002923
2924 and ::
2925
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002926 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2927
2928 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2929 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2930 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2931 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2932
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002933 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2934 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2935 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2936 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2937 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2938
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002939 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2940 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002941 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2942 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002943
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002944Library
2945-------
2946
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002947- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2948 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2949
2950- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2951 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2952 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2953 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2954 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2955 See PEP 307 for details.
2956
2957- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2958 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2959
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002960- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2961 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002962 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002963 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2964 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002965 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002966
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002967- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2968 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2969
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002970- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2971 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2972 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2973
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002974- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2975
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002976- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2977 exception.
2978
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002979- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2980 class.
2981
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002982- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2983 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2984 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2985
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002986- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2987 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2988
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002989- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002990 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2991 See SF bug #659228.
2992
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002993- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2994 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2995 See SF patch #651082.
2996
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002997- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002998
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002999- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3000 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3001
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003002- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003003 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003004
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003005- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3006 DOS paths from other platforms.
3007
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003008Tools/Demos
3009-----------
3010
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003011- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3012 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3013 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3014 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3015 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3016 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3017 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3018 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3019 example:
3020
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003021 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3022 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003023
3024 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3025
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003026
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003027Build
3028-----
3029
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003030- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3031 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3032 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003033 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3034
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003035 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3036
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003037- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3038 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3039 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3040 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3041 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3042 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3043 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3044 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3045 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3046
3047- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3048 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3049 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3050 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3051
3052- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3053 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3054
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003055C API
3056-----
3057
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003058- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3059 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003060
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003061- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3062 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3063 tp_as_number pointer.
3064
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003065- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3066 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3067 (SF #681367)
3068
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003069- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3070 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3071 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3072 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003073
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003074Tests
3075-----
3076
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003077- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003078 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3079 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3080 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3081 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3082 pydoc.)
3083
3084- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3085
3086- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003087
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003088Windows
3089-------
3090
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003091- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3092 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3093 time).
3094
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003095- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3096 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3097
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003098- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3099 release without strong cryptography.
3100
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003101- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003102 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003103
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003104- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3105 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3106
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003107Mac
3108---
3109
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003110- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3111 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003112
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003113- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3114 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3115 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003116
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003117- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3118 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003119
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003120- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3121 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3122 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3123 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003124
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003125- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003126 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3127 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3128 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003129
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003130
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003131What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003132=================================
3133
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003134*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003135
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003136Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003137--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003138
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003139- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3140
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003141- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3142 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003143 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003144 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003145 a different meaning than before.
3146
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003147- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003148 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003149 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003150
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003151- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003152 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003153 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003154
3155- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3156 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3157 and deallocation.
3158
3159- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3160 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3161
3162- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3163 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3164 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3165 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3166 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3167
3168- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3169 now detected by the garbage collector.
3170
3171- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3172 [SF bug 519621]
3173
3174- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3175 identifier.
3176
3177- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3178 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3179 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3180 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3181 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3182 [SF bug 563060]
3183
3184- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3185 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3186 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3187 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3188 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3189
3190- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3191 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3192 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3193
3194- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3195
3196- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3197 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3198 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3199 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3200 state of the slots would be lost.)
3201
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003202Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003203-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003204
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003205- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003206 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3207 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3208 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3209 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003210 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3211 Jython 2.1.
3212
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003213- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003214 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003215 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3216 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3217 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3218 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3219 these, see PEP 302.
3220
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003221- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3222 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3223 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3224
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003225- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3226 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3227 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3228
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003229- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3230 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3231 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3232
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003233- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3234 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3235 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3236 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3237 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3238 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3239 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3240 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3241 releases or implementations.
3242
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003243- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003244 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3245 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003246
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003247- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3248 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3249
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003250- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3251 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3252 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3253
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003254- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3255 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3256
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003257- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3258 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003259 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3260 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003261
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003262- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3263 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3264 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3265 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3266 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3267
3268 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3269 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3270 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3271 pattern.
3272
3273 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3274 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3275 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3276 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3277
3278 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3279 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3280 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3281 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3282 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3283 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3284
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003285- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3286 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3287 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3288 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3289 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3290 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3291 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3292 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003293
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003294- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3295 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3296 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3297 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3298 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003299 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3300 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3301 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3302 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3303 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3304 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3305 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003306
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003307- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3308 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3309
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003310- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3311 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3312 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3313 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3314 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3315 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3316 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3317 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3318 to Zack Weinberg!
3319
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003320- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3321 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3322 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3323 type. This has been fixed now.
3324
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003325- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3326 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3327 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3328
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003329- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3330 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3331 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3332 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3333 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3334 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3335 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3336 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003337 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003338
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003339- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3340 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3341 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003342
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003343- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3344 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3345 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3346 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3347 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3348 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3349 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3350 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003351 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003352 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3353 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3354
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003355- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3356 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3357 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3358 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3359 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3360 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3361 this.)
3362
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003363- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3364 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003365 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003366 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003367 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3368 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003369 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3370 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003371
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003372- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3373 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3374 currently running.
3375
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003376- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3377 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3378 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3379 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3380
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003381- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3382 as directory names.
3383
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003384- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3385 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3386
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003387- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3388 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3389
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003390- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003391 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3392 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003393
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003394- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3395 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3396 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3397 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3398 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3399
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003400- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3401 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3402 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3403 removed.
3404
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003405- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3406 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3407 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3408
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003409- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3410 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3411 to __debug__.
3412
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003413- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3414 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3415 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3416
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003417- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3418 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3419 deprecated now.
3420
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003421- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3422 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3423 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003424
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003425- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3426 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3427 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3428 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3429 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003430
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003431- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3432 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3433
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003434- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3435 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3436 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003437 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003438 is backward compatible.
3439
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003440- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3441 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3442 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3443 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3444 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3445
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003446- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3447 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3448 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3449 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3450 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3451 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003452
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003453- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3454 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3455
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003456- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3457 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3458
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003459- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3460 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3461 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3462 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3463 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3464
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003465- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3466 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3467 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3468
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003469- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003470 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3471
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003472- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3473 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3474 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003475
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003476- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3477 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3478
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003479- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3480 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3481 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3482
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003483- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3484
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003485Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003486-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003487
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003488- Added three operators to the operator module:
3489 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3490 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3491 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3492
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003493- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3494
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003495- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3496 archives.
3497
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003498- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3499 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3500 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3501
3502 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3503
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003504- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3505 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3506 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003507 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003508
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003509- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3510 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3511 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3512 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003513 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3514 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3515 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3516 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003517
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003518- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3519 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003520
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003521- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3522
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003523- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3524 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3525
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003526- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3527 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3528 supported.
3529
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003530- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3531
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003532- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3533 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003534
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003535- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3536 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3537
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003538- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3539
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003540- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3541 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3542
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003543- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3544 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3545 functions but callable type objects.
3546
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003547- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003548 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003549 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003550
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003551- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3552 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003553
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003554- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3555 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003556
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003557- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3558 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3559 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3560 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3561
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003562- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3563 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003564
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003565- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3566 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3567 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3568 and __imul__.
3569
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003570- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003571 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3572 is called.
3573
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003574- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3575 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3576 interpreter was compiled.
3577
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003578- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3579 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3580 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003581 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003582 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3583 1, not 2.
3584
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003585- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3586 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3587 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3588 limit.
3589
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003590- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3591 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3592 bug #623464.
3593
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003594- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3595 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3596 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3597 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3598
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003599Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003600-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003601
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003602- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3603
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003604- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3605 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3606 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3607 with Python 2.3a2.
3608
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003609- os.path exposes getctime.
3610
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003611- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003612 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003613 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003614 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003615 unit tests of floating point results.
3616
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003617- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3618 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3619 has been increased.
3620
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003621- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3622 executed.
3623
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003624- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3625 postinstallation script.
3626
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003627- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3628 test the current module.
3629
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003630- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003631 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3632 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3633 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3634 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3635
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003636- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003637 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003638 Ward's Optik package.
3639
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003640- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3641 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3642 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3643 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3644
3645- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3646 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003647 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003648
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003649- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3650 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3651 shelf are binary pickles.
3652
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003653- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3654 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3655
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003656- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3657 modules are iterators now.
3658
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003659- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3660 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3661 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3662 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3663 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3664 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003665
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003666- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3667 with their entity value.
3668
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003669- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3670
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003671- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3672 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003673
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003674- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3675 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003676 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003677
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003678- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3679 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3680 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3681 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3682 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3683 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3684 main():
3685
3686 import locale
3687 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3688
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003689- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3690 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3691
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003692- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3693 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3694 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3695 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3696 to the new standard.
3697
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003698- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3699 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3700 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3701 an extension to the database.
3702
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003703- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3704 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3705 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3706 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003707 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003708
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003709- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003710 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003711
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003712- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3713 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3714 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3715 bounded integers.
3716
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003717- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3718 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3719 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3720 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3721 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3722 in existence.
3723
3724 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3725 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3726 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3727 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3728 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3729 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3730
3731 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3732 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3733 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3734 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3735
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003736- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3737 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3738 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3739
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003740- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3741
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003742- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3743 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3744 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3745 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3746
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003747- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3748 argument.
3749
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003750- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3751 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3752 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3753 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3754 [SF patch 560794].
3755
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003756- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3757 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3758 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003759 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3760 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3761 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003762
3763- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3764 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003765
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003766- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3767 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3768 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3769 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003770
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003771- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3772 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3773 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3774 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3775 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3776
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003777- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003778
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003779- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3780
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003781- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3782 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3783 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3784 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3785 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3786 identical to None.
3787
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003788- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3789 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3790 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3791 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3792 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3793 results now.
3794
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003795- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3796 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3797
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003798- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3799 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3800 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3801 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3802 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3803 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3804 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3805 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3806
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003807- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3808
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003809- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3810 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3811
3812- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3813 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3814 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3815 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3816 and other systems.
3817
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003818- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3819 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3820 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3821 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 +00003822 work well with these.
3823
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003824- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3825
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003826- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003827 connections.
3828
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003829- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3830 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3831 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3832
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003833- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3834 sets
3835
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003836- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3837 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3838 name.
3839
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003840- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3841 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3842 passed in.
3843
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003844- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003845 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003846 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3847 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003848
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003849- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3850
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003851- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3852
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003853- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3854 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3855 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3856
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003857- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3858 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3859 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3860 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003861 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003862
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003863- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003864 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003865 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003866
3867- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3868 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3869 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3870
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003871- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003872 the value of its expression argument.
3873
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003874- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3875 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3876 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3877
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003878- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3879 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3880 skipstone browser was included.
3881
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003882- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3883 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3884
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003885Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003886-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003887
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003888- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3889 names in addition to accepting file names.
3890
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003891- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3892 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3893 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3894 still used and useful.)
3895
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003896- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3897 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3898 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3899 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003900
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003901- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3902 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3903 the generated binary.
3904
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003905Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003906-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003907
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003908- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3909
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003910- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3911 except in the hands of experts.
3912
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003913- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003914 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3915 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3916 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003917
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003918- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3919 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3920 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3921 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3922 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3923 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3924 builds.
3925
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003926- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3927 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3928 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3929 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3930 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3931 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3932 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3933 new type.
3934
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003935- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003936
3937 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3938 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3939 positive infinities.
3940
3941 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3942 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3943 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3944 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3945 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3946 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3947 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3948
3949 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3950
3951 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3952
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003953- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3954 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3955 size of the executable.
3956
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003957- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3958 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3959 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3960 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003961
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003962- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3963
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003964- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3965 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3966 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003967
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003968- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3969 well as Unix.
3970
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003971- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3972 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3973 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3974 modules in the README file for details.
3975
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003976C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003977-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003978
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003979- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3980 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003981 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003982 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003983 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003984
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003985- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3986 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3987 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3988 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3989 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3990 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003991 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003992 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3993 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3994 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3995 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3996 aligned.)
3997
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003998- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3999 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4000 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4001
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004002- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4003 level.
4004
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004005- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4006 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4007 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4008 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4009 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4010
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004011- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4012 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4013 code.
4014
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004015- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4016 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4017 adjusting for negative indices.
4018
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004019- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4020 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4021 object.
4022
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004023- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4024 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4025 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4026
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004027- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4028 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004029
4030- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4031
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004032- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4033 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4034 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4035 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4036
4037- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4038
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004039- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004040
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004041- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004042 without going through the buffer API.
4043
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004044- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004045
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004046- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4047 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4048 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4049 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4050
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004051- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4052 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4053
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004054- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004055 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4056
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004057New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004058-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004059
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004060- OpenVMS is now supported.
4061
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004062- AtheOS is now supported.
4063
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004064- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4065
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004066- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4067
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004068Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004069-----
4070
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004071- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4072 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4073 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004074
4075Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004076-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004077
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004078- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4079 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4080 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4081 bugs.
4082 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004083 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004084 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4085 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004086 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004087
4088- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004089 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004090
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004091- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4092 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4093
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004094- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4095 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004096 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004097 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4098
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004099- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4100 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4101 use files" uninstall option).
4102
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004103- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4104
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004105- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4106 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4107
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004108- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4109 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4110 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4111
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004112- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4113 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4114 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4115 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4116 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004117 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4118 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4119 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004120
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004121- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004122 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004123 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4124 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4125 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4126 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4127 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4128 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4129 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4130 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4131 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4132 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4133 work around.
4134
4135- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4136 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4137 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4138 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4139 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4140 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4141 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4142 specified with O_CREAT too).
4143
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004144Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004145----
4146
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004147- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004148
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004149- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4150 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4151 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4152
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004153- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4154 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4155 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4156
4157- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4158 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4159 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4160 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4161 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4162 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4163 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4164 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004165
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004166- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4167 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4168 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004169
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004170- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4171 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4172 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4173 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4174 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004175
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004176- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4177 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4178 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004179
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004180- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4181 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004182
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004183- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4184 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4185 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4186 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4187 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004188
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004189- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4190 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4191 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4192
4193- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4194 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4195 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004196
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004197- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4198 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4199 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4200 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004201 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004202
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004203- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4204 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004205
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004206- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4207 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004208
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004209- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004210 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004211 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4212 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004213
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004214
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004215What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004216===============================
4217
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004218*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4219
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004220Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004221--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004222
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004223- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4224 with a custom metaclass.
4225
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004226Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004227-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004228
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004229- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4230 are proxies.
4231
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004232Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004233-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004234
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004235- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4236 very short strings.
4237
4238- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4239 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4240 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4241 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4242 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4243
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004244Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004245-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004246
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004247- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4248 close or delete time).
4249
4250- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4251 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4252
4253- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4254
4255- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004256 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004257
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004258Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004259-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004260
4261Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004262-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004263
4264C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004265-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004266
4267New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004268-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004269
4270Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004271-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004272
4273Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004274-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004275
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004276- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4277
4278- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4279 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4280
4281- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4282 deleted at process exit time.
4283
4284- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4285 in backslash.
4286
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004287Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004288----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004289
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004290- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4291 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4292 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4293
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004294
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004295What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004296===========================
4297
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004298*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4299
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004300Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004301--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004302
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004303- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4304 been extensively updated. See
4305
4306 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4307
4308 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4309
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004310- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4311 deleted!
4312
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004313- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4314 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4315 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4316 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4317 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4318
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004319- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4320
4321 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4322 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4323
4324 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4325 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4326 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4327 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4328 supported anyway.
4329
4330 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4331 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4332
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004333- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4334 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4335 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4336 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4337 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004338
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004339- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4340 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4341 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4342
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004343Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004344-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004345
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004346- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4347 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4348 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4349 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4350 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4351 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004352 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4353 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4354 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4355 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004356
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004357- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4358 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4359 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4360
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004361Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004362-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004363
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004364- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4365
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004366Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004367-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004368
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004369- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4370 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4371 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4372 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4373 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4374 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4375
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004376- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4377
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004378- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4379
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004380- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4381
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004382- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4383 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4384 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4385
4386- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4387
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004388Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004389-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004390
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004391- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4392 off a search on Google.
4393
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004394Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004395-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004396
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004397- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4398 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4399 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4400 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4401 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4402 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4403 other platforms should do likewise.
4404
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004405- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4406 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4407 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4408
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004409C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004410-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004411
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004412- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4413 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4414 producing key-value pairs.
4415
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004416- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004417 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004418 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4419 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4420 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4421 previously went unchallenged.
4422
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004423New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004424-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004425
4426Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004427-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004428
4429Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004430-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004431
4432Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004433----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004434
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004435- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4436 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004437
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004438- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4439 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4440 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4441 home.
4442
4443
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004444What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004445===========================
4446
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004447*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4448
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004449Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004450--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004451
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004452- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4453 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004454
4455 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004456 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004457
4458 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4459 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004460 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004461 This needs to be documented.
4462
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004463- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4464 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4465
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004466- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4467 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4468 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4469
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004470- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4471 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4472
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004473- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4474 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4475 class forbids it).
4476
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004477- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4478 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4479 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4480
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004481- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4482
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004483Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004484-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004485
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004486- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4487 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004488 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004489
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004490- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4491 (like 1 + '').
4492
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004493Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004494-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004495
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004496- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4497 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4498 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4499 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004500 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004501 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4502
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004503- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4504 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4505 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4506 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4507
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004508- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4509 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004510 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4511 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4512 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004513
4514- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4515 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004516
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004517- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4518 bytes on its input.
4519
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004520Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004521-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004522
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004523- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004524 convenience function.
4525
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004526- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4527 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4528 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004529 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4530 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4531 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4532 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4533 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4534 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004535
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004536- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4537 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4538 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4539 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4540
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004541- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4542 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4543 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4544
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004545- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4546 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4547 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4548 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4549
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004550- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4551 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004552 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004553 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4554 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4555 new -l and -e options.
4556
4557- statcache is now deprecated.
4558
4559- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4560 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004561 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004562 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4563 time properly taken into account.
4564
4565- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4566 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4567 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4568 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4569
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004570Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004571-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004572
4573Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004574-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004575
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004576- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4577 is built with libdb3 if available.
4578
4579- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4580
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004581C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004582-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004583
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004584- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4585 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4586 PySequence_Size().
4587
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004588- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4589
4590- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4591 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4592 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4593
4594- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4595 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4596
4597- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4598 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4599
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004600New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004601-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004602
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004603- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4604 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4605
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004606- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4607 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4608
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004609- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4610
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004611Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004612-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004613
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004614- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4615 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4616
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004617Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004618-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004619
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004620Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004621----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004622
4623- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4624 removed completely in the next release.
4625
4626- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4627 OSX.
4628
4629- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4630 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4631
4632- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4633
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004634
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004635What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004636===========================
4637
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004638*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4639
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004640Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004641--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004642
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004643- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004644 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004645 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004646 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4647 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004648 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4649 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004650 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4651 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004652
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004653- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4654 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4655
4656- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4657 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4658
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004659Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004660-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004661
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004662- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4663 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4664 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4665 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4666 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4667 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4668 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4669 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4670
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004671- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4672 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4673 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4674 example).
4675
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004676- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004677 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004678 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004679 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004680
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004681- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4682 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4683 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004684 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004685
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004686- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4687 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4688 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4689 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4690 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4691 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4692
4693 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4694
4695 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4696
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004697Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004698-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004699
4700- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4701
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004702- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4703
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004704- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4705 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004706
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004707- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4708 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4709 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4710 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4711 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4712 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004713 attributes.
4714
4715- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4716 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4717 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004718
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004719- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4720 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4721 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004722
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004723- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4724 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4725 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004726 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4727 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4728
4729- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4730 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004731
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004732Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004733-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004734
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004735- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4736 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4737
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004738- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4739 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4740 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4741 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4742
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004743- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4744 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4745 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4746 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4747
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004748 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4749 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4750 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4751 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4752 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4753 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4754 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4755 without losing information).
4756
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004757- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004758 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4759 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4760 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4761 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4762 module).
4763
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004764 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004765 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4766 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4767 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4768 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004769
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004770- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004771 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4772 encoding.
4773
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004774- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4775 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4776
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004777- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004778 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4779
4780- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4781 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4782 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4783 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4784
4785- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4786
4787- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4788 ON, and OFF.
4789
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004790- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4791 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4792
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004793Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004794-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004795
4796- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4797 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4798 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004799
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004800- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4801 been added: -X and -E.
4802
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004803Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004804-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004805
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004806- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4807 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4808
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004809C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004810-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004811
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004812- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4813 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4814 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4815 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4816 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4817
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004818- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4819 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4820 as long) arguments.
4821
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004822- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4823 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4824 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4825 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4826 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4827 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4828
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004829- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4830 input.
4831
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004832New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004833-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004834
4835Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004836-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004837
4838Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004839-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004840
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004841- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4842 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4843 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4844
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004845- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4846 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4847 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004848 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004849
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004850 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4851 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4852 import signal
4853 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004854
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004855 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004856 while 1:
4857 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004858 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004859 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4860 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4861 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4862 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004863
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004864
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004865What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4866===========================
4867
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004868*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4869
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004870Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004871--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004872
4873- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4874 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4875 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4876
4877- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4878 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4879 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4880 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4881 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4882 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4883 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004884
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004885- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004886 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004887 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4888 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4889 associate a docstring with a property.
4890
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004891- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4892 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4893 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4894 other built-in object types.
4895
4896- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4897 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4898 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4899 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4900 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4901
4902- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4903 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4904
4905- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4906 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004907 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004908 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4909 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4910 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4911 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4912 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4913
4914- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4915 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4916 class.
4917
4918- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4919 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4920 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4921 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4922
4923- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4924 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4925 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4926 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4927
4928- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4929 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4930
4931- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4932 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4933 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4934 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4935 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004936 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004937 with the same value as s.
4938
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004939- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4940
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004941Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004942----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004943
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004944- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4945
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004946- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4947 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4948 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4949 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4950 objects.
4951
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004952- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4953 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004954 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4955 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4956
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004957- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4958 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4959 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4960
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004961Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004962-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004963
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004964- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4965 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4966 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4967 by the instances.
4968
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004969- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4970 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4971 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4972
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004973- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4974 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4975 before the entire comparison is complete.
4976
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004977- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4978 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4979 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4980
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004981- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4982 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4983 getwriter().
4984
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004985- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4986 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4987
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004988- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004989 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4990 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4991
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004992- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4993 iterable object.
4994
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004995- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4996 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004997
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004998- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4999 authentication.
5000
5001- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5002 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005003
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005004- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005005 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5006 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5007 a sample driver.)
5008
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005009Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005010-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005011
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005012- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5013 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5014 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5015 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5016 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5017 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5018 kernel has large file support.
5019
5020- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5021 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5022 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5023 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5024 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5025
5026- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5027 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5028 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5029
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005030C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005031-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005032
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005033- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5034 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5035
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005036New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005037-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005038
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005039- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5040 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5041
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005042Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005043-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005044
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005045- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5046 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5047 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5048 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5049 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5050
5051- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5052 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5053 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5054 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5055
5056- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5057 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5058
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005059Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005060-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005061
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005062- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005063 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5064 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005065
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005066
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005067What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5068===========================
5069
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005070*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5071
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005072Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005073----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005074
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005075- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5076 big to represent as a C double.
5077
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005078- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5079 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5080 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5081 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5082 restriction).
5083
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005084- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5085 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5086 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5087 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5088 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5089
5090 >>> dir([])
5091 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5092 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5093 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5094 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5095 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5096 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5097 'reverse', 'sort']
5098
5099 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5100
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005101- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005102 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5103 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5104 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5105 OverflowError exception.
5106
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005107- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005108 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005109 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5110 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5111 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5112 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5113 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005114 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005115 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5116 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5117
5118 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5119 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5120 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5121 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005122
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005123- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005124 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5125 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5126 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5127 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5128 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5129 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5130 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5131 once it is created.
5132
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005133- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5134 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5135 (key, value) pairs.
5136
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005137- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005138 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5139 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5140
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005141- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5142 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5143 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5144 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5145 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005146
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005147- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005148 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5149 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5150
5151 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5152
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005153- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005154 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5155
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005156Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005157-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005158
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005159- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005160 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5161 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005162
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005163- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5164 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5165 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5166 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5167 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5168 in this area anymore).
5169
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005170- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5171 threading.Timer.
5172
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005173- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5174 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5175
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005176- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005177 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5178
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005179- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005180 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5181 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5182 converted to Python longs.
5183
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005184- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005185 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5186
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005187- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5188 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5189 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5190
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005191Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005192-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005193
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005194- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5195 division operators as per PEP 238.
5196
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005197Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005198-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005199
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005200- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5201 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5202 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5203 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5204
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005205C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005206-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005207
5208- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005209
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005210- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5211 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005212 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005213
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005214 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5215 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005216 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005217 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005218
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005219- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005220 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5221 module:
5222
5223 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005224
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005225 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5226 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005227
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005228 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5229 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005230
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005231 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5232
5233 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5234
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005235- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005236 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5237 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5238 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005239
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005240New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005241-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005242
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005243- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5244 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5245 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5246 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5247 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005248
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005249Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005250-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005251
5252Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005253-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005254
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005255- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5256 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5257 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5258 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005259 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5260 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5261 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5262 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5263 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005264
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005265- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005266 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5267
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005268
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005269What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5270===========================
5271
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005272*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5273
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005274Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005275-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005276
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005277- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5278 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5279
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005280- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5281 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5282 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005283
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005284- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5285 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5286 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5287 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005288
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005289- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5290
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005291- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005292
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005293Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005294-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005295
5296- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005297 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005298 the module docstring for details.
5299
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005300Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005301-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005302
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005303- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005304 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5305 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5306 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005307
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005308- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5309 Nick Mathewson.
5310
5311Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005312----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005313
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005314- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5315 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5316 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5317 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5318 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5319 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5320 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5321 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5322
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005323- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5324 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5325 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5326 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5327
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005328- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5329 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5330 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5331 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5332 come a long way).
5333
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005334- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5335 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5336 write filters for these warnings).
5337
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005338- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5339 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5340 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5341 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5342 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5343
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005344- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5345 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5346 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5347 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5348 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5349 older distribution.
5350
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005351Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005352-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005353
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005354- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5355 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005356 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005357
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005358- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5359 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5360 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5361
5362- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5363
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005364- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5365
5366- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5367
5368- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5369
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005370- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005371
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005372- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5373
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005374New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005375-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005376
5377C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005378-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005379
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005380- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5381 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5382 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5383 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5384 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5385 against buffer overruns.
5386
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005387- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005388 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5389 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005390 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5391 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5392 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5393
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005394- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5395 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5396 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5397 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5398 deprecated.
5399
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005400Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005401-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005402
5403- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5404 relevant is found.
5405
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005406
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005407What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005408===========================
5409
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005410*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5411
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005412Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005413----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005414
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005415- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5416 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5417 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5418 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5419 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5420 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5421 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5422 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005423 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005424 repaired.
5425
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005426- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005427 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005428 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5429 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5430 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5431 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5432 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5433 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5434 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5435 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5436
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005437- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5438 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5439 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5440 leading BMO character).
5441
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005442- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5443 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5444 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5445
5446 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5447 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5448 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005449
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005450 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5451 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5452 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5453 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5454 for various simple to use conversions.
5455
5456 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5457 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5458
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005459 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5460 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5461 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5462 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5463 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5464 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5465 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5466 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5467 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5468 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5469 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5470 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5471 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5472 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5473 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005474
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005475- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5476 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5477 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005478 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005479 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005480
5481 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005482 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5483 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5484 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5485 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5486 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005487 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5488 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005489
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005490 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5491 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5492 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005493 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005494
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005495- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5496 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5497 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5498 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5499 floating arithmetic,
5500
5501 x = 9007199254740992.0
5502 print long(x)
5503
5504 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5505 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5506 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5507 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5508 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5509 functions are of good quality).
5510
5511 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5512 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5513 algorithms to break.
5514
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005515- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5516 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5517 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5518 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5519 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5520 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5521 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5522 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5523 order.
5524
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005525- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5526 operation along the most common code paths.
5527
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005528- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5529 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5530
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005531- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5532 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5533 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5534 {}.update(UserDict())
5535
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005536- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5537 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5538 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5539 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5540 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5541 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5542 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5543 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5544
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005545- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005546 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005547
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005548 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005549 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5550 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005551 join() method of strings
5552 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005553 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5554 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005555 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005556 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005557
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005558- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5559 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5560
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005561- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5562 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5563
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005564- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5565 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5566 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5567 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5568
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005569- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5570 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005571 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005572 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5573 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005574
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005575- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5576
5577
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005578Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005579-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005580
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005581- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005582 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005583 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5584 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5585
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005586- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5587 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5588
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005589- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5590 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5591 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5592 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5593
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005594- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5595 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5596 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5597
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005598- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5599
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005600- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5601
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005602- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5603 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5604 that are still imported into string.py).
5605
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005606- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5607
5608- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5609 Now it does.
5610
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005611- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5612
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005613- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5614 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5615 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5616 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5617 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005618 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5619 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005620
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005621- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5622 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5623 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5624 'help(object)'.
5625
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005626Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005627-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005628
5629- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005630 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005631 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5632 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5633
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005634- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005635 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5636 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005637
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005638C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005639-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005640
5641- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5642 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005643
5644----
5645
5646**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**