blob: 32da2f76c74a77b2513f6cda911b41054400d2b2 [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
10Core and builtins
11-----------------
12
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000013- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
14 list.sort().
15
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000016
17Extension Modules
18-----------------
19
20
21Library
22-------
23
24- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000025 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000026
27
28Build
29-----
30
31
32C API
33-----
34
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +000035- Removed PyRange_New().
36
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000037
38Tests
39-----
40
41
42Mac
43---
44
45
46
47Tools/Demos
48-----------
49
50
51
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +000052What's New in Python 2.4 final?
53===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +000054
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +000055*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +000056
57Core and builtins
58-----------------
59
60- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
61 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
62 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
63
64
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +000065What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
66==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000067
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +000068*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000069
70Core and builtins
71-----------------
72
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +000073- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
74 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
75 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
76
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000077
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +000078Library
79-------
80
81- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
82 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
83 raised is re-raised.
84
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +000085- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
86 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
87
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +000088- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
89 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
90 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
91 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
92 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
93 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
94 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
95 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
96 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
97 by the slice are recomputed now.
98
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +000099- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000100
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000101Build
102-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000103
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000104- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
105 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
106 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000107
108C API
109-----
110
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000111- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
112
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000113
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000114What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
115================================
116
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000117*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000118
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000119License
120-------
121
122The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
123is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
124changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
125Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
126intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
127durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
128the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
129License::
130
131 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
132
133says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
134to Python 2.1.1.
135
136The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
137License Version 2.
138
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000139Core and builtins
140-----------------
141
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000142- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
143 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
144 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
145 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
146 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
147 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
148 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
149 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
150 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
151 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
152
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000153- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000154
155Extension Modules
156-----------------
157
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000158- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
159 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
160 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
161 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000162
163Library
164-------
165
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000166- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
167 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
168 returned.
169
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000170- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
171
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000172- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
173 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
174
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000175- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
176
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000177- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
178 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000179
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000180- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
181
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000182- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
183
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000184- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000185 the source code is updated and reloaded.
186
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000187Build
188-----
189
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000190- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000191
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000192What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
193================================
194
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000195*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000196
197Core and builtins
198-----------------
199
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000200- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000201 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
202
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000203- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
204 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
205 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
206 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
207
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000208- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
209 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
210
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000211- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
212 constant.
213
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000214- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
215 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
216 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
217 large), and to anomalies such as
218 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
219 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
220 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
221 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000222
223Extension modules
224-----------------
225
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000226- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
227 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000228 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
229 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
230 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000231
232Library
233-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000234
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000235- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000236 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000237 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
238 --swig-cpp.
239
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000240- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
241 it is set.
242
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000243- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000244
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000245- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
246 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
247 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
248 Closes bug #1039270.
249
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000250- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000251
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000252 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000253 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
254 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
255 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
256 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
257 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
258 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
259 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
260 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
261 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
262 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
263 + Updates to documentation.
264
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000265- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
266 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
267 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
268 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
269
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000270- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000271
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000272- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
273 applications should use the getmember function.
274
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000275- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
276
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000277- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
278 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
279 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
280 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
281 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
282 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
283 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
284 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
285 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
286
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000287- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
288 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000289 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000290
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000291- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
292 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
293 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
294 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
295 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
296 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
297 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
298 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000299
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000300- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
301 the new public features (of which there are many).
302
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000303- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000304 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
305 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
306 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
307 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000308 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000309
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000310- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
311
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000312- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
313 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
314 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
315 options.
316
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000317- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
318 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
319 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
320 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
321 conditions under which non-string values work.
322
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000323Build
324-----
325
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000326- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
327 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
328 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
329
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000330- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
331 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
332 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
333 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
334 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000335
336C API
337-----
338
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000339- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
340 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
341
342- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
343
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000344- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
345 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
346 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
347 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
348 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
349 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
350 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
351 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
352 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
353
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000354- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
355
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000356- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
357 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
358 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000359
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000360Tests
361-----
362
363- test__locale ported to unittest
364
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000365Mac
366---
367
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000368- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
369 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
370 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000371
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000372Tools/Demos
373-----------
374
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000375- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
376 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
377 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
378 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
379 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000380
381
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000382What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
383=================================
384
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000385*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000386
387Core and builtins
388-----------------
389
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000390- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000391 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
392
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000393- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
394 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
395 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
396 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
397 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
398 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
399 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
400 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000401 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
402 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
403 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
404 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
405 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000406
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000407- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
408 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
409 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
410 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
411 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
412
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000413- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
414
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000415- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
416 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
417
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000418- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
419 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
420 modified the list.
421
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000422- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
423 functions is now writable.
424
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000425- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
426 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
427 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
428 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
429
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000430- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
431 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
432 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
433 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
434 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000435
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000436- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
437 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
438
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000439Extension modules
440-----------------
441
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000442- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
443
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000444- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
445 data.
446
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000447- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
448 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
449 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
450 supposed to have been truncated away.
451
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000452- Added socket.socketpair().
453
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000454- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
455 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
456
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000457- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000458 versions of Python, have now been removed.
459
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000460Library
461-------
462
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000463- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000464 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000465
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000466- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
467 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
468
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000469- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
470 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
471
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000472- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
473
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000474- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
475 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000476
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000477- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
478 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
479
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000480- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
481
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000482- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
483
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000484- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
485
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000486- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
487 Percivall.
488
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000489- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
490 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
491
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000492- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
493 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
494 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000495 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000496
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000497- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
498 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
499 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
500 and exponent.
501
502- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
503
504- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
505 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
506 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
507
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000508- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
509 to the readline module.
510
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000511- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000512 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
513 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000514
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000515- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
516 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
517 contains symlinks.
518
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000519- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
520 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
521
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000522- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
523 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
524 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
525
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000526- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
527 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
528 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
529 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
530 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
531 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
532 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
533 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
534 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
535 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
536 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
537 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
538 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
539
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000540- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
541
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000542Tools/Demos
543-----------
544
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000545- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
546 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
547
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000548- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
549
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000550Build
551-----
552
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000553- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
554 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
555 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
556 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
557 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
558 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
559 plans to do so.
560
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000561- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
562 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
563
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000564- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
565 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
566
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000567- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
568 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
569
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000570- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
571 GNU/k*BSD systems.
572
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000573- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
574 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
575
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000576C API
577-----
578
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000579..
580
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000581Documentation
582-------------
583
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000584- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
585 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
586
587- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
588 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
589 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000590
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000591New platforms
592-------------
593
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000594- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
595
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000596Tests
597-----
598
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000599..
600
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000601Windows
602-------
603
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000604- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
605 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
606 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
607 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
608 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
609 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
610 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
611 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
612 the problem.
613
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000614Mac
615---
616
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000617..
618
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000619
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000620What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
621=================================
622
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000623*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000624
625Core and builtins
626-----------------
627
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000628- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
629 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
630 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
631 sensitive code.
632
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000633- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000634 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000635
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000636 @staticmethod
637 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000638
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000639 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000640
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000641- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
642 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
643 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
644 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
645 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
646 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
647 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
648 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
649 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
650 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
651 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
652
653 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
654 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
655 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
656 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
657 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
658 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
659 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
660
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000661- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
662 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
663
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000664- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000665 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000666
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000667- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000668 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000669 which was missing for no apparent reason.
670
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000671- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000672 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
673 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
674
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000675- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
676 types that support garbage collection.
677
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000678- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
679
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000680- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
681 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
682 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
683 Jython.
684
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000685- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
686
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000687- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
688 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
689
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000690- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
691 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
692 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000693
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000694- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
695 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
696 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
697
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000698Extension modules
699-----------------
700
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000701- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
702
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000703Library
704-------
705
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000706- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
707 TIS-620
708
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000709- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
710 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
711 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
712 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
713 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
714 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
715 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
716 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
717 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
718 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
719
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000720- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
721
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000722- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
723 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
724 same as when the argument is omitted).
725 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
726
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000727- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
728
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000729- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
730 schemes are offered.
731
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000732- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
733
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000734- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
735 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
736 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
737
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000738- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
739
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000740- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
741 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
742
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000743- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
744 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
745 when dummy_threading is being used.
746
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000747- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
748 from a tarfile.
749
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000750- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000751 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000752
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000753- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
754 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
755 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
756 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
757
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000758- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
759 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
760
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000761- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
762 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
763 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
764 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
765 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
766 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
767 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
768 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
769 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
770 by some other method in progress).
771
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000772- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
773 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
774 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000775
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000776- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
777
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000778- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
779 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
780 AM Kuchling.
781
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000782- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
783 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
784 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
785
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000786- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
787 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
788 instead of unsigned.
789
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000790- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000791 no longer part of the public API.
792
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000793- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
794 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
795 string methods of the same name).
796
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000797- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000798 SF patch 945642.
799
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000800- doctest unittest integration improvements:
801
802 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
803
804 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
805 DocTestSuites.
806
807- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
808 that provide thread-local data.
809
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000810- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
811 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
812
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000813- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
814
815- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
816 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
817 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
818
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000819- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
820
821 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
822 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
823 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000824
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000825 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
826 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
827 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
828 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
829
830 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
831 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
832
833 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
834 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
835 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
836 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
837
838 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
839 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
840 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
841 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
842 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
843
844 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
845 wrapping help output.
846
847 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
848 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
849 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000850
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000851C API
852-----
853
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000854- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
855 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
856 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
857 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
858 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
859 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
860 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
861 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
862 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
863 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
864 its visible semantics have not changed.
865
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000866- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
867 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
868
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000869Documentation
870-------------
871
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000872- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000873
874 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000875 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000876
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000877 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000878
879 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
880
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000881- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000882
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000883Tests
884-----
885
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000886- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +0000887 platforms that use the Makefile.
888
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000889- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
890 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
891 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
892
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000893
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000894What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
895=================================
896
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +0000897*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000898
899Core and builtins
900-----------------
901
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +0000902- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
903 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
904 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
905 objects now (one object instead of three).
906
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +0000907- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
908 Windows DLLs.
909
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +0000910- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
911 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +0000912
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +0000913- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
914 a new .pyc magic.
915
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +0000916- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
917 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
918 be there.
919
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +0000920- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
921 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
922 the LC_NUMERIC category.
923
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +0000924- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
925 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
926 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
927
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +0000928- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
929
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +0000930- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
931 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
932 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +0000933
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +0000934- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
935 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
936
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +0000937- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
938
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000939- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000940 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000941
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +0000942- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
943
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +0000944- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
945
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +0000946- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
947 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
948
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +0000949- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
950 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
951 Fixes bug #858016 .
952
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +0000953- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
954 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
955 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
956
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +0000957- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
958 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
959 improves their performance (about 35%).
960
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +0000961- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
962 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
963 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
964
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +0000965- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
966 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
967 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
968 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
969
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000970- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
971 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
972 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
973 length is not known).
974
975- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
976 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +0000977 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
978 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000979 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
980
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +0000981- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
982 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
983
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +0000984- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
985 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
986 keyword arguments.
987
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +0000988- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
989 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
990 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
991
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +0000992- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
993 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
994 cases.
995
996- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
997 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
998 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
999 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1000 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1001 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1002 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1003 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1004 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1005 a release build.
1006
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001007- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1008 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1009
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001010- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001011 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001012
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001013- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1014 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1015 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1016 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1017 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1018 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1019 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1020 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1021 destroyed.
1022
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001023- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1024 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1025 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1026 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1027 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1028 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1029 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1030 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1031
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001032- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1033 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1034 character other than a space.
1035
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001036- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1037 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1038 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1039 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1040 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1041 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1042 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1043 attributes with the same name.
1044
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001045- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1046 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1047 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1048 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1049 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1050 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1051 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1052 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1053 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1054 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1055 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1056 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1057 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1058 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001059
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001060- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1061 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1062 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1063 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1064 This has been repaired.
1065
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001066- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1067
1068- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1069
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001070- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1071 over a sequence.
1072
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001073- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001074 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001075
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001076- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1077
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001078- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1079 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1080 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1081 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1082 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1083 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1084 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1085 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1086
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001087- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1088 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1089 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1090
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001091- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1092 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1093 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1094 freelist.
1095
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001096- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1097 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1098
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001099- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1100 number.
1101
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001102- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1103 a TypeError exception.
1104
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001105- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1106 820195.
1107
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001108- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1109 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1110 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1111
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001112- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001113 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1114 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001115
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001116- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1117 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1118 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1119
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001120- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1121 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001122 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001123
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001124- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001125 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1126 the first call.
1127
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001128
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001129Extension modules
1130-----------------
1131
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001132- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1133 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1134
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001135- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1136 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1137 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1138 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1139 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1140 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1141 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001142
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001143- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1144
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001145- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1146
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001147- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1148 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1149
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001150- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1151 fewer false positives.
1152
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001153- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1154 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1155
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001156- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001157 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1158
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001159- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001160 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001161 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001162 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1163 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001164
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001165- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1166 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1167 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1168 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1169
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001170- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1171 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1172 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1173 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1174 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1175 #897625.
1176
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001177- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1178 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1179
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001180- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1181 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1182 and pops on either side of the deque.
1183
1184- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1185 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1186
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001187- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1188 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1189 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1190 other functions that expect a function argument.
1191
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001192- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1193
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001194- os.getsid was added.
1195
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001196- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1197 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1198 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1199
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001200- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1201
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001202- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1203
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001204- readline.clear_history was added.
1205
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001206- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1207
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001208- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1209
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001210- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1211
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001212- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1213
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001214- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1215
1216- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1217
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001218- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1219
1220- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1221
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001222- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1223 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1224 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1225
1226- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1227 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1228 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1229 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1230 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1231 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1232 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1233
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001234- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1235 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1236 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1237 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001238
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001239- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001240 iterators from a single iterable.
1241
1242- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1243 of raising a TypeError exception.
1244
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001245- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1246 as parameter.
1247
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001248Library
1249-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001250
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001251- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1252 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1253 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001254
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001255- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1256 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1257 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001258
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001259- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001260
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001261- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1262 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001263
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001264- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1265 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1266
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001267- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1268
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001269- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001270 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001271
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001272- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001273 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001274
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001275- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1276
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001277- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1278 on cygwin and mingw32.
1279
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001280- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1281
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001282- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1283 module.
1284
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001285- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1286 installation scheme for all platforms.
1287
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001288- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001289 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001290
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001291- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1292 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1293 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1294
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001295- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1296 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1297 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1298
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001299- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1300
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001301- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1302
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001303- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1304 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1305
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001306- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1307 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1308 type pattern with the same value exists.
1309
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001310- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1311 when run from the command prompt).
1312
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001313- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1314 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1315
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001316- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1317 default sort).
1318
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001319- Added global runctx function to profile module
1320
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001321- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1322
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001323- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1324
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001325- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1326
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001327- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001328 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1329 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1330 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1331 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1332 accordingly.
1333
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001334- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1335 decoding standards.
1336
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001337- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1338 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1339 called for all requests.
1340
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001341- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1342 they are passed to the compiler.
1343
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001344- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1345 indent, width and depth.
1346
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001347- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1348 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1349
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001350- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1351 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1352
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001353- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1354
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001355- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1356
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001357- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1358
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001359- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1360 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1361
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001362- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001363 for better performance.
1364
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001365- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001366
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001367- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1368 a string).
1369
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001370- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1371
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001372- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1373
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001374- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1375
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001376- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1377
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001378- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1379 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1380 list of fieldnames.
1381
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001382- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1383 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1384
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001385- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1386
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001387- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1388 empty lists.
1389
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001390- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1391 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1392 and shelves.
1393
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001394- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1395 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1396
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001397- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001398 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1399 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001400
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001401- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1402 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001403 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001404
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001405- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001406 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1407 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1408
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001409- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1410 and removed in Py2.4.
1411
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001412- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1413
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001414- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1415
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001416Tools/Demos
1417-----------
1418
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001419- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1420 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1421
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001422- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1423
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001424- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1425 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1426 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1427 destination in situations where both files are given.
1428
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001429- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1430 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1431 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1432 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1433
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001434- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1435
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001436- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1437 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1438 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1439 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1440 now.
1441
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001442- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1443 in effect
1444
1445- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1446 C-c C-h
1447
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001448- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1449 -d option was given.
1450
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001451Build
1452-----
1453
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001454- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1455 build under OS X.
1456
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001457- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1458 --enable-profiling.
1459
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001460- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1461 is configured --with-tsc.
1462
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001463- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1464 on AMD64.
1465
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001466- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1467 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1468
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001469- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1470 removed.
1471
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001472- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1473 supported (see PEP 11).
1474
1475- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1476
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001477- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1478
1479- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1480 (see PEP 11).
1481
1482- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1483 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1484
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001485C API
1486-----
1487
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001488- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1489 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1490 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1491
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001492- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1493 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1494 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1495 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1496
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001497- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1498 generator objects.
1499
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001500- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1501 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001502 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1503 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001504
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001505- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1506 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1507
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001508- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1509 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1510 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1511 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1512 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1513
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001514- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1515 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1516 about 10% faster.
1517
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001518- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1519 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1520
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001521- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1522 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1523 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1524 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1525
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001526Windows
1527-------
1528
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001529- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1530 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1531 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1532 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1533
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001534- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1535 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1536 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1537
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001538
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001539What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1540===============================
1541
1542*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1543
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001544IDLE
1545----
1546
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001547- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1548 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1549 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1550 context-menu actions.
1551
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001552- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1553 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1554 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1555 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1556 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1557 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1558 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1559 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1560 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1561
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001562
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001563What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1564=============================================
1565
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001566*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001567
1568Core and builtins
1569-----------------
1570
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001571- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001572 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001573 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1574
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001575Extension modules
1576-----------------
1577
1578- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1579 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1580 than once. This has been fixed.
1581
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001582- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1583 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1584 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1585 call.
1586
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001587- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1588
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001589Library
1590-------
1591
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001592- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1593 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1594
1595- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1596 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1597 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1598 restored.
1599
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001600IDLE
1601----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001602
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001603- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001604
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001605Build
1606-----
1607
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001608- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1609 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1610
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001611C API
1612-----
1613
1614Windows
1615-------
1616
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001617- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1618 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1619
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001620- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1621
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001622Mac
1623---
1624
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001625- Various fixes to pimp.
1626
1627- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1628
1629- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1630 more problems than it solves.
1631
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001632
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001633What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1634=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001635
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001636*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1637
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001638Core and builtins
1639-----------------
1640
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001641- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1642 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1643
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001644- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1645 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001646 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001647
1648- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1649 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1650 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001651 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001652
1653- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1654 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001655
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001656- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1657 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1658 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1659
1660- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001661 770247.
1662
1663- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001664
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001665Extension modules
1666-----------------
1667
1668- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1669 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1670
1671- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1672
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001673- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1674
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001675- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1676 contained within the _strptime module.
1677
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001678- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1679 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1680
1681- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001682 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1683
1684- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1685 the find_class attribute, if present.
1686
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001687- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001688
1689 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1690 (SF bug 763298).
1691
1692 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001693 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1694 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1695 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001696
1697 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1698
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001699Library
1700-------
1701
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001702- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1703
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001704- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1705 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1706 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1707 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1708 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1709 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1710 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1711 or Tester().
1712
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001713- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1714 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1715 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1716 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1717 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1718 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1719 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1720 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1721 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001722
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001723 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001724
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001725- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1726 weren't before was an oversight.
1727
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001728- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1729 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1730
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001731- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1732 when there are no lines.
1733
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001734- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1735 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1736
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001737- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1738 to child processes.
1739
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001740- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1741
1742- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1743
1744- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1745 xmlrpclib.
1746
1747- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1748 responses.
1749
1750- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1751 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1752
1753- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1754 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1755 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1756
1757- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1758 used as patterns.
1759
1760- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1761 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1762 than Tk 8.3.
1763
1764- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1765
1766- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001767
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001768Tools/Demos
1769-----------
1770
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001771- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1772
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001773- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1774
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001775- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001776
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001777Build
1778-----
1779
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001780- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1781
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001782- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1783
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001784- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1785 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001786
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001787- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1788 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1789 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001790
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001791C API
1792-----
1793
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001794- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1795 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1796
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001797Windows
1798-------
1799
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001800- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1801 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1802 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1803 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1804 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1805 Python exception ::
1806
1807 thread.error: can't start new thread
1808
1809 is raised now.
1810
1811- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1812 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1813 instead of from DLL teardown.
1814
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001815Mac
1816---
1817
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001818- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001819 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001820 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1821 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1822 the executable in the bundle.
1823
1824- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001825
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001826- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1827
1828- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1829 on Panther.
1830
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001831What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1832================================
1833
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001834*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001835
1836Core and builtins
1837-----------------
1838
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001839- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1840 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1841 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1842 with the -i option.
1843
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001844- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1845 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1846
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001847- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1848 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1849
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001850- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1851 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1852 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1853 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1854 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1855 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1856 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1857 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1858 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1859 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1860 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1861 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1862 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001863
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001864- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1865 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1866 embedded in a lambda expression.
1867
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001868- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1869 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1870 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1871 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1872 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1873
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001874- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1875 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1876 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1877
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001878- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1879 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1880
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001881- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1882 It's writable again.
1883
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001884- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1885 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1886 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001887 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001888
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001889- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1890 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
1891 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
1892
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001893Extension modules
1894-----------------
1895
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00001896- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
1897 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
1898
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001899- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
1900 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
1901 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
1902 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
1903
1904- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
1905 collection.
1906
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00001907- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
1908 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
1909 unique within a single program run.
1910
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001911- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1912 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1913
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001914- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1915 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1916
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001917- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1918 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001919
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001920- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1921
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001922- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1923 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1924
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001925- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1926 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1927 for many BSD-derived systems.
1928
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001929
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001930Library
1931-------
1932
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001933- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1934 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1935 primary ones:
1936
1937 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1938 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1939 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1940
1941 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1942 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1943 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1944 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1945 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1946 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1947
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001948- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1949 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1950 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1951 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1952 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1953 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1954 argument.
1955
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001956- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1957 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1958 in the archive.
1959
1960- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1961 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1962
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001963- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1964 569574).
1965
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001966- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1967 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1968 no more.
1969
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001970- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1971 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1972 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1973 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1974 code coverage.
1975
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001976- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1977 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
1978 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001979 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
1980 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001981
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001982- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1983 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1984 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001985 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001986
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001987- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1988
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001989- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
1990 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
1991 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
1992 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
1993
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001994- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1995 handling.
1996
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001997- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1998 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1999
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002000- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2001 in socket.py.
2002
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002003- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2004
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002005- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2006 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2007 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2008 opener with proxy support.
2009
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002010- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2011
2012- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2013
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002014Tools/Demos
2015-----------
2016
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002017- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2018
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002019- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2020
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002021- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2022 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002023
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002024- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2025 files.
2026
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002027Build
2028-----
2029
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002030- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002031 different root directory.
2032
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002033C API
2034-----
2035
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002036- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2037 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2038 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2039 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2040 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2041 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2042 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2043 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2044 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2045 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2046
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002047- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2048 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2049 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2050 from Python.
2051
2052
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002053New platforms
2054-------------
2055
2056None this time.
2057
2058Tests
2059-----
2060
2061- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2062 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2063
2064Windows
2065-------
2066
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002067- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2068
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002069- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2070 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2071 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2072 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2073 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2074 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2075 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2076 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2077 that's what it's for.
2078
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002079Mac
2080---
2081
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002082- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2083 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2084 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2085 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002086- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2087 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2088- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002089
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002090SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2091------------------------------------
2092
2093430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2094598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2095622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2096661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2097683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2098697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2099713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2100724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2101727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2102729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2103730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2104731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2105732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2106733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2107735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2108740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2109744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2110745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2111747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2112749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2113751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2114753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2115755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2116757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2117760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2118
2119
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002120What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2121================================
2122
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002123*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002124
2125Core and builtins
2126-----------------
2127
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002128- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2129 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2130
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002131- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2132 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2133 and cannot be strings).
2134
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002135- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2136 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2137 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2138 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2139
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002140- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2141 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2142 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2143 Python itself.
2144
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002145- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2146 the referenced object, if it has one.
2147
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002148- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2149 the thread started at
2150 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2151
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002152- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2153 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2154 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2155 placed on a list index.
2156
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002157- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2158 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2159 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2160 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2161
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002162- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2163 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2164 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2165 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2166 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2167 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2168 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2169
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002170- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2171 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2172 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2173 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2174 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2175
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002176- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2177 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002178
2179- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2180 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2181 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2182 #693195.)
2183
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002184- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2185 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002186
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002187- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002188 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002189 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2190 interpreter executions, would fail.
2191
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002192- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002193 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002194 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002195
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002196Extension modules
2197-----------------
2198
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002199- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2200 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2201 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2202 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2203
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002204- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2205 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2206
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002207- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2208 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2209 and Greg Chapman.)
2210
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002211- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2212 recursively.
2213
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002214- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002215 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2216 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2217 leaks.
2218
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002219- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2220
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002221- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2222 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2223 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2224 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2225 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2226 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2227 #705836.
2228
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002229- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002230 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2231
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002232- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2233 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2234 See SF bug #692416.
2235
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002236- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2237 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2238
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002239- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2240 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2241 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002242
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002243- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002244 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2245 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2246
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002247- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2248 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2249 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2250 timeouts to work properly.
2251
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002252Library
2253-------
2254
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002255- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2256 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2257 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2258 future release.
2259
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002260- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2261 for querying platform dependent features.
2262
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002263- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002264
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002265- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2266 pickle protocol versions.
2267
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002268- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2269 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2270 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2271
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002272- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2273
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002274- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2275 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2276 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2277 modules.
2278
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002279- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2280 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2281 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2282
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002283- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2284 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2285
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002286- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2287 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2288 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2289
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002290- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002291 MS Office extensions.
2292
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002293- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2294 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2295
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002296- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2297 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2298
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002299- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2300 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2301 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2302 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2303 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2304 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2305
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002306- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2307 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2308 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002309
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002310- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2311 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2312 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2313
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002314- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2315
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002316- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2317 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2318 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2319
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002320Tools/Demos
2321-----------
2322
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002323- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2324 See the module docstring for details.
2325
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002326Build
2327-----
2328
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002329- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2330 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002331
2332C API
2333-----
2334
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002335- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2336
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002337- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2338 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2339 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2340
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002341- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2342 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002343
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002344 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2345 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2346 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002347
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002348- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002349 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2350
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002351- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2352 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2353 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002354
2355New platforms
2356-------------
2357
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002358None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002359
2360Tests
2361-----
2362
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002363- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2364 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002365
2366Windows
2367-------
2368
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002369- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2370 function.
2371
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002372- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2373 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002374
2375Mac
2376---
2377
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002378- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2379 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002380
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002381- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2382 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002383
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002384- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2385 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2386 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002387
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002388- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002389 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2390 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002391
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002392- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2393 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002394
2395
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002396What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2397=================================
2398
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002399*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002400
2401Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002402-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002403
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002404- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2405 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2406 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2407
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002408- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2409 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2410 (SF patch #664376.)
2411
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002412- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2413 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2414 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2415 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2416 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2417 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002418 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002419
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002420- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2421 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2422 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2423 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002424 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002425
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002426- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2427 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2428 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2429 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2430 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2431 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2432 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2433 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2434 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2435 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2436 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2437
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002438- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2439 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2440 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2441 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2442 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2443 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2444
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002445- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2446 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2447
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002448- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2449 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2450 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2451 case.)
2452
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002453- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2454 passed as unicode strings.
2455
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002456- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2457 See SF bug #683467.
2458
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002459- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2460 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2461
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002462- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2463
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002464- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2465
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002466- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2467 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2468 arguments.
2469
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002470- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2471 See SF bug #667147.
2472
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002473- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002474 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002475 See SF bug #676155.
2476
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002477- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002478 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002479 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2480 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2481 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2482 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2483 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2484 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002485
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002486Extension modules
2487-----------------
2488
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002489- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2490 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2491 tp_as_number pointer.
2492
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002493- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2494 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2495 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2496 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2497 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2498
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002499- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2500
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002501- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2502
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002503- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002504 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002505 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2506 patch #678531.)
2507
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002508- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2509 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2510
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002511- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2512 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2513
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002514- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2515
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002516- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2517 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2518 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2519
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002520- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2521
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002522- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2523 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2524
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002525- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002526
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002527- datetime changes:
2528
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002529 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2530
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002531 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2532 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2533 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2534 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2535 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2536 now.
2537
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002538 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002539 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2540 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002541
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002542 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002543 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002544 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2545 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2546 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2547 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002548
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002549 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2550 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2551 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002552 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2553
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002554 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2555 by a later example coded by Guido.
2556
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002557 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002558 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2559 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2560 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002561 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2562 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2563
2564 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2565 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2566 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2567 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2568 tzinfo subclass instance.
2569
2570 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2571 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2572 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2573 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2574 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2575 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2576 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2577 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002578
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002579 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2580 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2581 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2582 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2583 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002584 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2585
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002586 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002587
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002588 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2589 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2590 as a naive datetime object.
2591
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002592 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2593 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2594 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2595
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002596 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2597 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2598 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2599 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2600 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2601 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2602 comparison.
2603
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002604 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2605 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2606 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2607 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002608 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002609
2610 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002611
2612 and ::
2613
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002614 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2615
2616 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2617 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2618 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2619 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2620
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002621 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2622 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2623 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2624 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2625 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2626
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002627 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2628 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002629 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2630 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002631
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002632Library
2633-------
2634
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002635- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2636 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2637
2638- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2639 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2640 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2641 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2642 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2643 See PEP 307 for details.
2644
2645- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2646 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2647
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002648- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2649 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002650 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002651 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2652 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002653 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002654
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002655- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2656 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2657
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002658- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2659 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2660 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2661
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002662- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2663
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002664- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2665 exception.
2666
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002667- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2668 class.
2669
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002670- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2671 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2672 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2673
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002674- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2675 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2676
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002677- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002678 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2679 See SF bug #659228.
2680
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002681- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2682 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2683 See SF patch #651082.
2684
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002685- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002686
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002687- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2688 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2689
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002690- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002691 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002692
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002693- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2694 DOS paths from other platforms.
2695
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002696Tools/Demos
2697-----------
2698
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002699- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2700 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2701 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2702 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2703 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2704 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2705 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2706 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2707 example:
2708
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002709 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2710 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002711
2712 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2713
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002714
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002715Build
2716-----
2717
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002718- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2719 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2720 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002721 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2722
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002723 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2724
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002725- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2726 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2727 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2728 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2729 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2730 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2731 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2732 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2733 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2734
2735- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2736 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2737 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2738 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2739
2740- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2741 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2742
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002743C API
2744-----
2745
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002746- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2747 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002748
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002749- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2750 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2751 tp_as_number pointer.
2752
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002753- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2754 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2755 (SF #681367)
2756
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002757- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2758 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2759 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2760 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002761
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002762Tests
2763-----
2764
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002765- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002766 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2767 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2768 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2769 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2770 pydoc.)
2771
2772- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2773
2774- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002775
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002776Windows
2777-------
2778
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002779- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2780 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2781 time).
2782
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002783- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2784 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2785
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002786- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2787 release without strong cryptography.
2788
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002789- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002790 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002791
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002792- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2793 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2794
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002795Mac
2796---
2797
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002798- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2799 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002800
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002801- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2802 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2803 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002804
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002805- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2806 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002807
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002808- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2809 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2810 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2811 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002812
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002813- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002814 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2815 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2816 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002817
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002818
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002819What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002820=================================
2821
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002822*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002823
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002824Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002825--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002826
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002827- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2828
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002829- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2830 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002831 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002832 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002833 a different meaning than before.
2834
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002835- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002836 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002837 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002838
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002839- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002840 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002841 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002842
2843- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2844 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2845 and deallocation.
2846
2847- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2848 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2849
2850- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2851 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2852 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2853 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2854 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2855
2856- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2857 now detected by the garbage collector.
2858
2859- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2860 [SF bug 519621]
2861
2862- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2863 identifier.
2864
2865- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2866 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2867 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2868 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2869 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2870 [SF bug 563060]
2871
2872- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2873 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2874 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2875 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2876 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2877
2878- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2879 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2880 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2881
2882- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2883
2884- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2885 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2886 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2887 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2888 state of the slots would be lost.)
2889
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002890Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002891-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002892
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002893- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002894 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
2895 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
2896 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
2897 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002898 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
2899 Jython 2.1.
2900
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002901- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002902 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002903 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
2904 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
2905 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
2906 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
2907 these, see PEP 302.
2908
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002909- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
2910 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2911 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2912
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002913- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2914 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2915 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2916
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002917- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2918 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2919 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2920
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002921- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2922 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2923 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2924 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2925 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2926 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2927 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2928 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2929 releases or implementations.
2930
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002931- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002932 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2933 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002934
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002935- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2936 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2937
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002938- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2939 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2940 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2941
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002942- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2943 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2944
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002945- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2946 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002947 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2948 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002949
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002950- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2951 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2952 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2953 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2954 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2955
2956 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2957 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2958 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2959 pattern.
2960
2961 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2962 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2963 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2964 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2965
2966 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2967 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2968 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2969 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2970 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2971 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2972
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002973- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2974 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2975 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2976 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2977 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
2978 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
2979 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
2980 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002981
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002982- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2983 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2984 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2985 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2986 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002987 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2988 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2989 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
2990 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
2991 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
2992 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
2993 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002994
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002995- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2996 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2997
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002998- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2999 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3000 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3001 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3002 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3003 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3004 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3005 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3006 to Zack Weinberg!
3007
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003008- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3009 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3010 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3011 type. This has been fixed now.
3012
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003013- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3014 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3015 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3016
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003017- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3018 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3019 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3020 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3021 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3022 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3023 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3024 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003025 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003026
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003027- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3028 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3029 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003030
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003031- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3032 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3033 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3034 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3035 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3036 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3037 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3038 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003039 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003040 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3041 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3042
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003043- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3044 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3045 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3046 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3047 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3048 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3049 this.)
3050
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003051- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3052 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003053 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003054 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003055 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3056 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003057 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3058 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003059
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003060- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3061 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3062 currently running.
3063
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003064- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3065 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3066 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3067 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3068
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003069- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3070 as directory names.
3071
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003072- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3073 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3074
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003075- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3076 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3077
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003078- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003079 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3080 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003081
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003082- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3083 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3084 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3085 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3086 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3087
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003088- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3089 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3090 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3091 removed.
3092
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003093- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3094 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3095 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3096
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003097- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3098 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3099 to __debug__.
3100
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003101- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3102 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3103 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3104
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003105- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3106 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3107 deprecated now.
3108
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003109- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3110 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3111 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003112
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003113- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3114 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3115 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3116 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3117 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003118
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003119- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3120 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3121
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003122- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3123 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3124 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003125 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003126 is backward compatible.
3127
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003128- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3129 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3130 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3131 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3132 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3133
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003134- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3135 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3136 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3137 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3138 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3139 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003140
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003141- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3142 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3143
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003144- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3145 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3146
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003147- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3148 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3149 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3150 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3151 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3152
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003153- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3154 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3155 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3156
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003157- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003158 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3159
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003160- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3161 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3162 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003163
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003164- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3165 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3166
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003167- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3168 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3169 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3170
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003171- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3172
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003173Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003174-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003175
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003176- Added three operators to the operator module:
3177 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3178 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3179 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3180
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003181- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3182
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003183- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3184 archives.
3185
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003186- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3187 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3188 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3189
3190 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3191
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003192- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3193 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3194 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003195 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003196
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003197- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3198 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3199 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3200 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003201 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3202 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3203 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3204 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003205
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003206- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3207 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003208
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003209- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3210
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003211- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3212 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3213
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003214- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3215 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3216 supported.
3217
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003218- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3219
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003220- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3221 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003222
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003223- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3224 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3225
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003226- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3227
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003228- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3229 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3230
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003231- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3232 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3233 functions but callable type objects.
3234
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003235- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003236 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003237 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003238
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003239- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3240 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003241
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003242- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3243 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003244
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003245- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3246 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3247 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3248 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3249
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003250- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3251 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003252
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003253- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3254 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3255 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3256 and __imul__.
3257
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003258- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003259 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3260 is called.
3261
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003262- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3263 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3264 interpreter was compiled.
3265
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003266- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3267 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3268 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003269 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003270 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3271 1, not 2.
3272
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003273- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3274 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3275 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3276 limit.
3277
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003278- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3279 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3280 bug #623464.
3281
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003282- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3283 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3284 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3285 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3286
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003287Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003288-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003289
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003290- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3291
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003292- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3293 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3294 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3295 with Python 2.3a2.
3296
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003297- os.path exposes getctime.
3298
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003299- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003300 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003301 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003302 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003303 unit tests of floating point results.
3304
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003305- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3306 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3307 has been increased.
3308
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003309- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3310 executed.
3311
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003312- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3313 postinstallation script.
3314
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003315- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3316 test the current module.
3317
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003318- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003319 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3320 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3321 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3322 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3323
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003324- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003325 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003326 Ward's Optik package.
3327
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003328- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3329 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3330 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3331 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3332
3333- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3334 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003335 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003336
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003337- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3338 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3339 shelf are binary pickles.
3340
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003341- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3342 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3343
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003344- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3345 modules are iterators now.
3346
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003347- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3348 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3349 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3350 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3351 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3352 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003353
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003354- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3355 with their entity value.
3356
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003357- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3358
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003359- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3360 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003361
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003362- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3363 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003364 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003365
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003366- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3367 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3368 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3369 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3370 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3371 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3372 main():
3373
3374 import locale
3375 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3376
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003377- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3378 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3379
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003380- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3381 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3382 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3383 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3384 to the new standard.
3385
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003386- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3387 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3388 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3389 an extension to the database.
3390
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003391- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3392 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3393 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3394 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003395 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003396
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003397- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003398 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003399
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003400- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3401 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3402 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3403 bounded integers.
3404
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003405- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3406 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3407 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3408 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3409 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3410 in existence.
3411
3412 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3413 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3414 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3415 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3416 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3417 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3418
3419 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3420 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3421 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3422 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3423
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003424- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3425 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3426 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3427
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003428- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3429
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003430- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3431 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3432 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3433 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3434
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003435- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3436 argument.
3437
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003438- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3439 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3440 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3441 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3442 [SF patch 560794].
3443
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003444- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3445 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3446 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003447 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3448 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3449 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003450
3451- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3452 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003453
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003454- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3455 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3456 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3457 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003458
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003459- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3460 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3461 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3462 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3463 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3464
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003465- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003466
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003467- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3468
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003469- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3470 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3471 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3472 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3473 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3474 identical to None.
3475
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003476- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3477 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3478 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3479 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3480 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3481 results now.
3482
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003483- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3484 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3485
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003486- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3487 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3488 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3489 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3490 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3491 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3492 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3493 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3494
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003495- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3496
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003497- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3498 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3499
3500- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3501 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3502 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3503 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3504 and other systems.
3505
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003506- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3507 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3508 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3509 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 +00003510 work well with these.
3511
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003512- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3513
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003514- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003515 connections.
3516
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003517- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3518 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3519 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3520
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003521- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3522 sets
3523
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003524- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3525 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3526 name.
3527
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003528- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3529 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3530 passed in.
3531
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003532- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003533 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003534 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3535 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003536
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003537- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3538
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003539- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3540
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003541- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3542 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3543 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3544
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003545- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3546 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3547 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3548 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003549 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003550
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003551- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003552 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003553 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003554
3555- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3556 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3557 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3558
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003559- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003560 the value of its expression argument.
3561
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003562- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3563 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3564 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3565
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003566- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3567 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3568 skipstone browser was included.
3569
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003570- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3571 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3572
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003573Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003574-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003575
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003576- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3577 names in addition to accepting file names.
3578
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003579- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3580 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3581 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3582 still used and useful.)
3583
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003584- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3585 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3586 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3587 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003588
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003589- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3590 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3591 the generated binary.
3592
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003593Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003594-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003595
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003596- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3597
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003598- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3599 except in the hands of experts.
3600
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003601- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003602 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3603 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3604 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003605
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003606- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3607 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3608 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3609 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3610 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3611 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3612 builds.
3613
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003614- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3615 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3616 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3617 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3618 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3619 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3620 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3621 new type.
3622
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003623- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003624
3625 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3626 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3627 positive infinities.
3628
3629 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3630 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3631 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3632 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3633 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3634 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3635 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3636
3637 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3638
3639 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3640
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003641- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3642 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3643 size of the executable.
3644
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003645- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3646 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3647 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3648 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003649
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003650- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3651
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003652- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3653 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3654 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003655
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003656- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3657 well as Unix.
3658
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003659- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3660 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3661 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3662 modules in the README file for details.
3663
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003664C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003665-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003666
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003667- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3668 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003669 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003670 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003671 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003672
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003673- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3674 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3675 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3676 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3677 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3678 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003679 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003680 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3681 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3682 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3683 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3684 aligned.)
3685
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003686- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3687 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3688 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3689
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003690- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3691 level.
3692
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003693- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3694 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3695 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3696 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3697 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3698
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003699- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3700 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3701 code.
3702
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003703- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3704 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3705 adjusting for negative indices.
3706
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003707- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3708 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3709 object.
3710
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003711- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3712 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3713 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3714
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003715- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3716 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003717
3718- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3719
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003720- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3721 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3722 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3723 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3724
3725- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3726
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003727- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003728
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003729- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003730 without going through the buffer API.
3731
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003732- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003733
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003734- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3735 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3736 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3737 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3738
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003739- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3740 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3741
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003742- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003743 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3744
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003745New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003746-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003747
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003748- OpenVMS is now supported.
3749
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003750- AtheOS is now supported.
3751
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003752- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3753
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003754- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3755
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003756Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003757-----
3758
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003759- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3760 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3761 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003762
3763Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003764-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003765
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003766- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3767 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3768 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3769 bugs.
3770 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003771 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003772 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3773 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003774 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003775
3776- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003777 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003778
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003779- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3780 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3781
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003782- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3783 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003784 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003785 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3786
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003787- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3788 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3789 use files" uninstall option).
3790
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003791- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3792
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003793- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3794 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3795
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003796- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3797 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3798 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3799
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003800- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3801 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3802 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3803 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3804 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003805 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3806 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3807 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003808
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003809- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003810 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003811 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3812 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3813 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3814 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3815 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3816 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3817 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3818 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3819 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3820 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3821 work around.
3822
3823- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3824 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3825 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3826 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3827 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3828 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3829 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3830 specified with O_CREAT too).
3831
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003832Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003833----
3834
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003835- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003836
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003837- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3838 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3839 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3840
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003841- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3842 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3843 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3844
3845- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3846 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3847 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3848 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3849 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3850 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3851 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3852 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003853
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003854- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3855 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3856 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003857
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003858- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3859 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3860 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3861 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3862 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003863
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003864- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3865 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3866 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003867
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003868- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3869 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003870
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003871- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3872 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3873 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3874 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3875 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003876
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003877- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3878 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3879 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3880
3881- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3882 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3883 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003884
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003885- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3886 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3887 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3888 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003889 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003890
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003891- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
3892 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003893
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003894- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
3895 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003896
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003897- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00003898 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003899 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
3900 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003901
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003902
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003903What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003904===============================
3905
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003906*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
3907
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003908Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003909--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003910
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003911- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3912 with a custom metaclass.
3913
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003914Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003915-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003916
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003917- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3918 are proxies.
3919
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003920Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003921-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003922
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003923- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3924 very short strings.
3925
3926- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3927 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3928 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3929 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3930 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3931
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003932Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003933-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003934
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003935- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3936 close or delete time).
3937
3938- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3939 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3940
3941- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3942
3943- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003944 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003945
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003946Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003947-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003948
3949Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003950-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003951
3952C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003953-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003954
3955New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003956-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003957
3958Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003959-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003960
3961Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003962-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003963
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003964- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3965
3966- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3967 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3968
3969- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3970 deleted at process exit time.
3971
3972- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3973 in backslash.
3974
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003975Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003976----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003977
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003978- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
3979 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
3980 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3981
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003982
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003983What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003984===========================
3985
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003986*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3987
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003988Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003989--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003990
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003991- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
3992 been extensively updated. See
3993
3994 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3995
3996 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3997
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003998- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3999 deleted!
4000
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004001- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4002 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4003 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4004 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4005 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4006
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004007- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4008
4009 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4010 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4011
4012 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4013 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4014 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4015 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4016 supported anyway.
4017
4018 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4019 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4020
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004021- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4022 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4023 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4024 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4025 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004026
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004027- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4028 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4029 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4030
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004031Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004032-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004033
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004034- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4035 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4036 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4037 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4038 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4039 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004040 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4041 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4042 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4043 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004044
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004045- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4046 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4047 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4048
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004049Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004050-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004051
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004052- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4053
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004054Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004055-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004056
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004057- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4058 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4059 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4060 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4061 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4062 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4063
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004064- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4065
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004066- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4067
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004068- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4069
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004070- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4071 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4072 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4073
4074- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4075
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004076Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004077-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004078
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004079- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4080 off a search on Google.
4081
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004082Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004083-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004084
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004085- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4086 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4087 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4088 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4089 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4090 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4091 other platforms should do likewise.
4092
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004093- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4094 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4095 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4096
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004097C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004098-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004099
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004100- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4101 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4102 producing key-value pairs.
4103
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004104- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004105 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004106 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4107 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4108 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4109 previously went unchallenged.
4110
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004111New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004112-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004113
4114Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004115-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004116
4117Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004118-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004119
4120Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004121----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004122
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004123- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4124 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004125
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004126- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4127 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4128 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4129 home.
4130
4131
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004132What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004133===========================
4134
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004135*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4136
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004137Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004138--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004139
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004140- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4141 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004142
4143 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004144 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004145
4146 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4147 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004148 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004149 This needs to be documented.
4150
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004151- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4152 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4153
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004154- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4155 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4156 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4157
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004158- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4159 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4160
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004161- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4162 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4163 class forbids it).
4164
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004165- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4166 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4167 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4168
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004169- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4170
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004171Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004172-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004173
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004174- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4175 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004176 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004177
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004178- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4179 (like 1 + '').
4180
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004181Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004182-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004183
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004184- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4185 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4186 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4187 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004188 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004189 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4190
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004191- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4192 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4193 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4194 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4195
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004196- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4197 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004198 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4199 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4200 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004201
4202- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4203 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004204
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004205- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4206 bytes on its input.
4207
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004208Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004209-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004210
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004211- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004212 convenience function.
4213
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004214- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4215 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4216 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004217 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4218 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4219 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4220 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4221 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4222 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004223
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004224- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4225 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4226 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4227 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4228
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004229- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4230 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4231 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4232
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004233- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4234 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4235 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4236 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4237
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004238- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4239 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004240 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004241 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4242 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4243 new -l and -e options.
4244
4245- statcache is now deprecated.
4246
4247- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4248 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004249 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004250 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4251 time properly taken into account.
4252
4253- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4254 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4255 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4256 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4257
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004258Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004259-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004260
4261Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004262-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004263
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004264- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4265 is built with libdb3 if available.
4266
4267- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4268
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004269C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004270-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004271
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004272- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4273 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4274 PySequence_Size().
4275
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004276- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4277
4278- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4279 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4280 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4281
4282- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4283 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4284
4285- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4286 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4287
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004288New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004289-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004290
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004291- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4292 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4293
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004294- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4295 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4296
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004297- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4298
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004299Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004300-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004301
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004302- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4303 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4304
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004305Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004306-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004307
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004308Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004309----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004310
4311- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4312 removed completely in the next release.
4313
4314- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4315 OSX.
4316
4317- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4318 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4319
4320- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4321
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004322
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004323What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004324===========================
4325
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004326*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4327
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004328Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004329--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004330
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004331- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004332 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004333 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004334 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4335 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004336 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4337 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004338 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4339 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004340
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004341- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4342 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4343
4344- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4345 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4346
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004347Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004348-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004349
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004350- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4351 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4352 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4353 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4354 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4355 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4356 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4357 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4358
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004359- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4360 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4361 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4362 example).
4363
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004364- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004365 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004366 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004367 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004368
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004369- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4370 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4371 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004372 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004373
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004374- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4375 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4376 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4377 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4378 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4379 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4380
4381 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4382
4383 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4384
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004385Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004386-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004387
4388- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4389
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004390- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4391
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004392- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4393 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004394
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004395- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4396 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4397 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4398 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4399 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4400 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004401 attributes.
4402
4403- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4404 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4405 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004406
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004407- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4408 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4409 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004410
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004411- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4412 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4413 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004414 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4415 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4416
4417- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4418 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004419
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004420Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004421-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004422
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004423- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4424 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4425
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004426- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4427 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4428 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4429 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4430
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004431- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4432 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4433 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4434 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4435
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004436 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4437 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4438 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4439 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4440 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4441 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4442 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4443 without losing information).
4444
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004445- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004446 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4447 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4448 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4449 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4450 module).
4451
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004452 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004453 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4454 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4455 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4456 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004457
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004458- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004459 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4460 encoding.
4461
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004462- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4463 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4464
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004465- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004466 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4467
4468- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4469 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4470 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4471 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4472
4473- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4474
4475- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4476 ON, and OFF.
4477
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004478- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4479 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4480
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004481Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004482-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004483
4484- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4485 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4486 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004487
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004488- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4489 been added: -X and -E.
4490
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004491Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004492-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004493
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004494- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4495 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4496
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004497C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004498-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004499
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004500- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4501 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4502 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4503 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4504 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4505
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004506- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4507 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4508 as long) arguments.
4509
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004510- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4511 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4512 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4513 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4514 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4515 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4516
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004517- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4518 input.
4519
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004520New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004521-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004522
4523Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004524-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004525
4526Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004527-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004528
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004529- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4530 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4531 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4532
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004533- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4534 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4535 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004536 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004537
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004538 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4539 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4540 import signal
4541 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004542
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004543 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004544 while 1:
4545 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004546 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004547 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4548 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4549 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4550 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004551
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004552
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004553What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4554===========================
4555
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004556*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4557
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004558Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004559--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004560
4561- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4562 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4563 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4564
4565- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4566 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4567 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4568 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4569 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4570 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4571 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004572
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004573- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004574 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004575 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4576 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4577 associate a docstring with a property.
4578
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004579- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4580 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4581 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4582 other built-in object types.
4583
4584- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4585 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4586 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4587 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4588 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4589
4590- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4591 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4592
4593- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4594 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004595 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004596 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4597 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4598 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4599 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4600 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4601
4602- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4603 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4604 class.
4605
4606- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4607 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4608 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4609 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4610
4611- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4612 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4613 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4614 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4615
4616- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4617 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4618
4619- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4620 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4621 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4622 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4623 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004624 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004625 with the same value as s.
4626
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004627- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4628
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004629Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004630----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004631
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004632- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4633
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004634- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4635 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4636 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4637 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4638 objects.
4639
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004640- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4641 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004642 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4643 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4644
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004645- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4646 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4647 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4648
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004649Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004650-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004651
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004652- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4653 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4654 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4655 by the instances.
4656
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004657- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4658 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4659 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4660
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004661- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4662 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4663 before the entire comparison is complete.
4664
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004665- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4666 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4667 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4668
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004669- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4670 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4671 getwriter().
4672
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004673- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4674 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4675
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004676- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004677 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4678 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4679
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004680- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4681 iterable object.
4682
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004683- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4684 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004685
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004686- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4687 authentication.
4688
4689- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4690 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004691
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004692- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004693 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4694 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4695 a sample driver.)
4696
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004697Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004698-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004699
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004700- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4701 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4702 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4703 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4704 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4705 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4706 kernel has large file support.
4707
4708- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4709 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4710 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4711 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4712 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4713
4714- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4715 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4716 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4717
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004718C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004719-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004720
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004721- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4722 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4723
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004724New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004725-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004726
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004727- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4728 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4729
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004730Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004731-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004732
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004733- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4734 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4735 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4736 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4737 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4738
4739- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4740 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4741 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4742 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4743
4744- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4745 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4746
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004747Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004748-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004749
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004750- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004751 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4752 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004753
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004754
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004755What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4756===========================
4757
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004758*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4759
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004760Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004761----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004762
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004763- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4764 big to represent as a C double.
4765
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004766- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4767 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4768 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4769 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4770 restriction).
4771
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004772- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4773 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4774 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4775 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4776 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4777
4778 >>> dir([])
4779 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4780 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4781 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4782 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4783 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4784 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4785 'reverse', 'sort']
4786
4787 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4788
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004789- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004790 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4791 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4792 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4793 OverflowError exception.
4794
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004795- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004796 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004797 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4798 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4799 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4800 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4801 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004802 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004803 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4804 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4805
4806 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4807 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4808 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4809 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004810
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004811- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004812 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4813 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4814 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4815 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4816 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4817 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4818 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4819 once it is created.
4820
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004821- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4822 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4823 (key, value) pairs.
4824
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004825- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004826 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4827 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4828
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004829- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4830 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4831 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4832 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4833 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004834
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004835- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004836 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4837 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4838
4839 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4840
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004841- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004842 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4843
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004844Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004845-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004846
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004847- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004848 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4849 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004850
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004851- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4852 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4853 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4854 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4855 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4856 in this area anymore).
4857
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004858- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4859 threading.Timer.
4860
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004861- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4862 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4863
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004864- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004865 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4866
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004867- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004868 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4869 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4870 converted to Python longs.
4871
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004872- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004873 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4874
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004875- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4876 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4877 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4878
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004879Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004880-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004881
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004882- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4883 division operators as per PEP 238.
4884
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004885Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004886-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004887
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004888- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4889 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4890 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
4891 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
4892
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004893C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004894-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004895
4896- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004897
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004898- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
4899 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004900 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004901
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004902 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
4903 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004904 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004905 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004906
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004907- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004908 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
4909 module:
4910
4911 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004912
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004913 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4914 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004915
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004916 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4917 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004918
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004919 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4920
4921 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4922
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004923- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004924 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4925 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4926 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004927
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004928New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004929-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004930
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004931- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4932 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4933 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4934 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4935 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004936
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004937Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004938-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004939
4940Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004941-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004942
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004943- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4944 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4945 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4946 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004947 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4948 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4949 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4950 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4951 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004952
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004953- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004954 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4955
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004956
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004957What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4958===========================
4959
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004960*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4961
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004962Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004963-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004964
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004965- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4966 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4967
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004968- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4969 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4970 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004971
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004972- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4973 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4974 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4975 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004976
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004977- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
4978
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004979- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004980
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004981Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004982-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004983
4984- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004985 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004986 the module docstring for details.
4987
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004988Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004989-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004990
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004991- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004992 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
4993 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4994 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004995
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004996- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4997 Nick Mathewson.
4998
4999Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005000----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005001
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005002- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5003 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5004 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5005 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5006 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5007 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5008 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5009 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5010
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005011- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5012 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5013 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5014 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5015
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005016- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5017 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5018 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5019 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5020 come a long way).
5021
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005022- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5023 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5024 write filters for these warnings).
5025
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005026- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5027 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5028 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5029 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5030 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5031
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005032- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5033 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5034 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5035 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5036 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5037 older distribution.
5038
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005039Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005040-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005041
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005042- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5043 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005044 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005045
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005046- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5047 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5048 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5049
5050- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5051
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005052- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5053
5054- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5055
5056- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5057
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005058- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005059
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005060- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5061
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005062New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005063-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005064
5065C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005066-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005067
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005068- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5069 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5070 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5071 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5072 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5073 against buffer overruns.
5074
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005075- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005076 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5077 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005078 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5079 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5080 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5081
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005082- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5083 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5084 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5085 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5086 deprecated.
5087
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005088Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005089-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005090
5091- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5092 relevant is found.
5093
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005094
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005095What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005096===========================
5097
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005098*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5099
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005100Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005101----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005102
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005103- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5104 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5105 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5106 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5107 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5108 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5109 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5110 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005111 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005112 repaired.
5113
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005114- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005115 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005116 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5117 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5118 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5119 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5120 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5121 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5122 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5123 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5124
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005125- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5126 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5127 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5128 leading BMO character).
5129
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005130- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5131 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5132 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5133
5134 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5135 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5136 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005137
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005138 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5139 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5140 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5141 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5142 for various simple to use conversions.
5143
5144 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5145 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5146
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005147 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5148 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5149 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5150 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5151 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5152 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5153 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5154 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5155 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5156 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5157 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5158 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5159 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5160 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5161 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005162
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005163- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5164 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5165 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005166 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005167 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005168
5169 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005170 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5171 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5172 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5173 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5174 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005175 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5176 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005177
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005178 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5179 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5180 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005181 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005182
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005183- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5184 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5185 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5186 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5187 floating arithmetic,
5188
5189 x = 9007199254740992.0
5190 print long(x)
5191
5192 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5193 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5194 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5195 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5196 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5197 functions are of good quality).
5198
5199 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5200 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5201 algorithms to break.
5202
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005203- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5204 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5205 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5206 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5207 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5208 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5209 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5210 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5211 order.
5212
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005213- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5214 operation along the most common code paths.
5215
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005216- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5217 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5218
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005219- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5220 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5221 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5222 {}.update(UserDict())
5223
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005224- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5225 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5226 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5227 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5228 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5229 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5230 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5231 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5232
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005233- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005234 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005235
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005236 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005237 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5238 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005239 join() method of strings
5240 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005241 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5242 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005243 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005244 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005245
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005246- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5247 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5248
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005249- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5250 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5251
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005252- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5253 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5254 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5255 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5256
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005257- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5258 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005259 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005260 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5261 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005262
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005263- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5264
5265
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005266Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005267-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005268
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005269- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005270 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005271 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5272 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5273
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005274- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5275 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5276
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005277- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5278 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5279 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5280 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5281
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005282- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5283 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5284 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5285
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005286- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5287
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005288- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5289
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005290- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5291 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5292 that are still imported into string.py).
5293
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005294- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5295
5296- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5297 Now it does.
5298
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005299- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5300
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005301- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5302 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5303 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5304 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5305 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005306 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5307 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005308
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005309- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5310 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5311 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5312 'help(object)'.
5313
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005314Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005315-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005316
5317- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005318 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005319 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5320 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5321
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005322- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005323 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5324 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005325
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005326C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005327-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005328
5329- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5330 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005331
5332----
5333
5334**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**