blob: 95d13ba03491463fea2ba6bb06f91b82e64665ee [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Martin v. Löwis18e16552006-02-15 17:27:45 +000015- PEP 353: Using ssize_t as the index type.
16
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000017- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
18 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
19 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
20
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000021- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
22 configure would break checking curses.h.
23
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000024- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
25 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
26
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000027- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
28
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000029- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
30
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000031- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
32
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000033- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
34 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
35
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +000036- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
37 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.build_number. Build number
38 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
39
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000040- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
41 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +000042 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000043
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +000044- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
45 now encodes backslash correctly.
46
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000047- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
48
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000049- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
50 and long longs.
51
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000052- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
53 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
54 message in this case.
55
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000056- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
57 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
58 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
59 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
60 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
61
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +000062- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000063
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000064- Speed up some Unicode operations.
65
66- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
67
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000068- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000069 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
70
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000071- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
72
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000073- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
74 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
75
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000076- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
77
78- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
79
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000080- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
81 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
82 was empty.
83
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000084- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
85 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
86
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000087- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000088 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000089
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000090- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
91 codes.
92
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000093- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
94 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
95 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
96
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000097- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
98 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
99
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +0000100- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +0000101 (fixes bug #1119418).
102
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000103- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
104
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000105- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
106 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
107
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000108- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
109 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
110 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
111
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000112- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
113
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000114- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
115 reference counts in some error exit cases.
116
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000117- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
118 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
119 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
120 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
121 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
122 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
123 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
124 realloc.
125
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000126- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
127 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
128
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000129- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
130 like their int counterparts.
131
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000132- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
133 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
134 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
135 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
136 for a longer write-up of the problem).
137
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000138- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
139 serializing floats.
140
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000141- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
142 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
143 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
144
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000145- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
146 278.
147
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000148- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
149 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
150 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
151 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000152 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000153 PyNumber_*().
154 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
155
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000156- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
157 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
158 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
159 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
160
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000161- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
162 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
163 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
164 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
165 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
166
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000167- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
168 disabled caused a crash.
169
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000170- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
171 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
172
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000173- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000174 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
175
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000176- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
177
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000178- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000179 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
180 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
181 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000182
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000183- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
184
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000185- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
186 returning None.
187
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000188- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000189 ('\') with a specific error message.
190
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000191- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
192
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000193- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
194 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
195
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000196- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000197 an ferror() call.
198
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000199- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
200 list.sort().
201
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000202- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
203 (2+3) --> (5).
204
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000205- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
206
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000207- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
208 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000209
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000210- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
211 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
212 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
213
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000214- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
215 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
216 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
217
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000218Extension Modules
219-----------------
220
Georg Brandlf4f44152006-02-18 22:29:33 +0000221- Patch #1393157: os.startfile() now has an optional argument to specify
222 a "command verb" to invoke on the file.
223
Neal Norwitz082b2df2006-02-07 07:04:46 +0000224- Bug #876637, prevent stack corruption when socket descriptor
225 is larger than FD_SETSIZE.
226
Neal Norwitz0e6bc8c2006-02-05 05:45:43 +0000227- Patch #1407135, bug #1424041: harmonize mmap behavior of anonymous memory.
228 mmap.mmap(-1, size) now returns anonymous memory in both Unix and Windows.
229 mmap.mmap(0, size) should not be used on Windows for anonymous memory.
230
Martin v. Löwis57a34e82006-02-04 19:12:37 +0000231- Patch #1422385: The nis module now supports access to domains other
232 than the system default domain.
233
Martin v. Löwis14694662006-02-03 12:54:16 +0000234- Use Win32 API to implement os.stat/fstat. As a result, subsecond timestamps
235 are reported, the limit on path name lengths is removed, and stat reports
236 WindowsError now (instead of OSError).
237
Gregory P. Smithcfc4a8d2006-01-29 19:46:23 +0000238- Add bsddb.db.DBEnv.set_tx_timestamp allowing time based database recovery.
239
Neal Norwitz62a21122006-01-25 05:21:55 +0000240- Bug #1413192, fix seg fault in bsddb if a transaction was deleted
241 before the env.
242
Martin v. Löwis11017b12006-01-14 18:12:57 +0000243- Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support.
244
Neal Norwitz3b4fff82006-01-11 08:54:45 +0000245- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
246
Neal Norwitz88bbd732006-01-10 07:05:44 +0000247- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
248 Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
249 The code now conforms to the documented signature.
250
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000251- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
252 without prior setting of the userptr.
253
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000254- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
255
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000256- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
257
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000258- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
259 problem on AIX.
260
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000261- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
262
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000263- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
264
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000265- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
266
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000267- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
268 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
269
Gregory P. Smithe101df92006-01-24 20:09:45 +0000270- Patch #1407992, fixes broken bsddb module db associate when using
271 BerkeleyDB 3.3, 4.0 or 4.1.
272
273- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 4.4
274
275- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 3.2
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000276
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000277- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
278 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
279
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000280- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
281
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000282- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
283 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
284
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000285- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
286 returns in cStringIO.c.
287
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000288- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
289 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
290
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000291- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
292
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000293- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
294
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000295- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
296 the file system encoding.
297
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000298- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
299 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000300
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000301- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
302
303- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000304 line without newlines.
305
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000306- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
307 on Windows.
308
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000309- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000310 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
311
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000312- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
313 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
314 for large or negative values.
315
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000316- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000317 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000318
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000319- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
320
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000321- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
322 if available on the platform.
323
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000324- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
325 available on the platform.
326
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000327- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
328 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
329
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000330- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
331
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000332- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
333 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
334 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
335
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000336- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
337
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000338- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
339 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
340
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000341- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000342 file size.
343
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000344- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
345
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000346- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
347 {remove_history,replace_history}
348
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000349- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
350 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000351
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000352- stat_float_times is now True.
353
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000354- array.array objects are now picklable.
355
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000356- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
357 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
358
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000359- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
360 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
361 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
362
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000363- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
364 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000365
366Library
367-------
368
Georg Brandl602b9ba2006-02-19 13:26:36 +0000369- Patch #1349274: gettext.install() now optionally installs additional
370 translation functions other than _() in the builtin namespace.
371
Georg Brandle4662172006-02-19 09:51:27 +0000372- Patch #1337756: fileinput now accepts Unicode filenames.
373
Georg Brandl7b4e7c22006-02-18 21:10:56 +0000374- Patch #1373643: The chunk module can now read chunks larger than
375 two gigabytes.
376
Georg Brandl21dd1af2006-02-17 13:35:13 +0000377- Patch #1417555: SimpleHTTPServer now returns Last-Modified headers.
378
Georg Brandlbd3bc4d2006-02-17 09:52:53 +0000379- Bug #1430298: It is now possible to send a mail with an empty
380 return address using smtplib.
381
Georg Brandl0e1abe22006-02-17 09:48:14 +0000382- Bug #1432260: The names of lambda functions are now properly displayed
383 in pydoc.
Georg Brandl501dd0d2006-02-17 09:45:40 +0000384
Martin v. Löwis00756902006-02-05 17:09:41 +0000385- Patch #1412872: zipfile now sets the creator system to 3 (Unix)
386 unless the system is Win32.
387
Martin v. Löwisc81e3a62006-01-30 15:04:31 +0000388- Patch #1349118: urllib now supports user:pass@ style proxy
Martin v. Löwis3e865952006-01-24 15:51:21 +0000389 specifications, raises IOErrors when proxies for unsupported protocols
390 are defined, and uses the https proxy on https redirections.
391
Georg Brandl531ceba2006-01-21 07:20:56 +0000392- Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications.
393
394- Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse.
Georg Brandl89f35ac2006-01-20 17:24:23 +0000395
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000396- Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py.
397
Neal Norwitzf60cd472006-01-14 07:05:13 +0000398- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
Georg Brandl45ab2332006-01-13 17:05:56 +0000399 any more.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000400
Georg Brandl4edd9892006-01-13 16:59:46 +0000401- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
402 when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000403
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000404- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
405
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000406- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
407
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000408- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
409 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
410 LoadError subclasses IOError.
411
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000412- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000413 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
414 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
415 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
416 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
417
418 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
419 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
420 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
421 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
422 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000423
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000424- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
425 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
426 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
427
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000428- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
429
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000430- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
431
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000432- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
433 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
434 illegal argument)
435
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000436- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
437 is an error in the format string.
438
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000439- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
440
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000441- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000442 "parent" argument.
443
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000444- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
445 for padding.
446
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000447- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
448 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
449
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000450- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
451 to get the correct encoding.
452
453- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
454 languages.
455
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000456- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
457
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000458- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
459
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000460- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
461
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000462- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
463 functionality.
464
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000465- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
466
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000467- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
468 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
469
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000470- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
471 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
472 match the Content-Length header.
473
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000474- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
475
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000476- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
477 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000478 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000479
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000480- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
481
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000482- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
483
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000484- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
485 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
486
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000487- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
488 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
489 Tkdnd.
490
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000491- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
492 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
493
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000494- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
495 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
496
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000497- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000498 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
499
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000500- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
501 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
502
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000503- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
504 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
505
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000506- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000507 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000508
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000509- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
510
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000511- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
512 error messages.
513
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000514- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
515
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000516- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
517 Bug #1224621.
518
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000519- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
520 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
521 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
522 terminates by raising StopIteration.
523
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000524- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
525
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000526- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
527 component of the path.
528
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000529- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
530 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
531 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
532 class at all.
533
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000534- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
535 files to PyPI.
536
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000537- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
538 them to PyPI.
539
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000540- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
541 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
542 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
543 work as expected.
544
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000545- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
546 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
547
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000548- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000549 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
550
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000551- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
552
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000553- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
554 to build.
555
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000556- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
557 symbolic links on Windows.
558
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000559- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000560 profile.py if available.
561
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000562- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
563
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000564- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
565 in LWPCookieJar.
566
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000567- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
568
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000569- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
570
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000571- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
572
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000573- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
574
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000575- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
576
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000577- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
578
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000579- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
580
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000581- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
582
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000583- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
584 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
585 be exploited in various ways.
586
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000587- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000588 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
589
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000590- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
591 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
592
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000593- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000594 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
595
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000596- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
597
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000598- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
599
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000600- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
601
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000602- Enhancements to the csv module:
603
604 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000605 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000606 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000607 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
608 reporting.
609 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
610 dictates.
611 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000612 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000613 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000614 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
615 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000616 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
617 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000618 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000619 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
620 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
621 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
622 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
623 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
624 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
625 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
626 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
627 without first creating a dialect class.
628 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
629 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
630 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000631 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000632 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
633 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000634 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
635 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
636 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
637 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000638 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
639 This has been fixed.
640
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000641- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
642 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
643 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
644 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
645
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000646- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
647
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000648- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
649 (Bug #951915).
650
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000651- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
652 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
653 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000654 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000655
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000656- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
657
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000658- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
659 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
660
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000661- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
662
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000663- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
664
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000665- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
666
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000667- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
668
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000669- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
670
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000671- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
672 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
673 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
674
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000675- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000676 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000677
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000678- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
679 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
680 tokenizer with very long source lines.
681
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000682- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
683 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
684 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000685
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000686- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
687 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000688
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000689- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
690 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
691
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000692- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
693 correctly.
694
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000695- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
696 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
697 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
698 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
699 between two lines.
700
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000701- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
702 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
703 handlers.
704
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000705- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000706 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
707 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000708
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000709- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
710 considering it exactly like a '*'.
711
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000712- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
713 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000714
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000715- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
716
Gustavo Niemeyer548148812006-01-31 18:34:13 +0000717- Patch #1413711: Certain patterns of differences were making difflib
718 touch the recursion limit.
719
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000720Build
721-----
722
Martin v. Löwis86d66262006-02-17 08:40:11 +0000723- Patch #1432345: Make python compile on DragonFly.
724
Martin v. Löwis856bf9a2006-02-14 20:42:55 +0000725- Build support for Win64-AMD64 was added.
726
Martin v. Löwisa55e55e2006-02-11 15:55:14 +0000727- Patch #1428494: Prefer linking against ncursesw over ncurses library.
728
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000729- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
730
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000731- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
732 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
733
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000734- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
735
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000736- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
737 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
738
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000739- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
740 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
741
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000742- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
743 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
744 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000745 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000746
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000747- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
748 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
749 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
750
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000751- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
752
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000753- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
754 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
755
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000756- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
757 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
758 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
759 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
760 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
761 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
762 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
763 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
764
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000765- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
766 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
767 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
768 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
769
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000770C API
771-----
772
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000773- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
774
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000775- Removed PyRange_New().
776
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000777- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
778 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
779 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
780 mappings.
781
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000782
783Tests
784-----
785
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000786- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000787
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000788- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
789 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
790
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000791
792Documentation
793-------------
794
Georg Brandl8cb30772006-01-20 09:34:29 +0000795- Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes.
796
Georg Brandla3a93ae2006-01-20 09:14:36 +0000797- Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid
798 values for text files with UNIX-style line endings.
799
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000800- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
801
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000802- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
803
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000804- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
805
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000806- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
807
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000808- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
809
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000810- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
811
812- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
813
814- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
815
816- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
817
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000818- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
819 Closes bug #1166582.
820
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000821- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
822 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
823 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
824
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000825Mac
826---
827
828
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000829New platforms
830-------------
831
832- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
833
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000834
835Tools/Demos
836-----------
837
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000838- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
839 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
840 source files that need an encoding declaration.
841 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
842
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000843- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
844
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000845- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000846
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000847- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
848 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000849
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000850What's New in Python 2.4 final?
851===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000852
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000853*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000854
855Core and builtins
856-----------------
857
858- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
859 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
860 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
861
862
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000863What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
864==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000865
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000866*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000867
868Core and builtins
869-----------------
870
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000871- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
872 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
873 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
874
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000875
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000876Library
877-------
878
879- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
880 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
881 raised is re-raised.
882
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000883- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
884 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
885
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000886- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
887 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
888 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
889 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
890 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
891 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
892 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
893 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
894 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
895 by the slice are recomputed now.
896
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000897- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000898
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000899Build
900-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000901
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000902- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
903 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
904 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000905
906C API
907-----
908
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000909- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
910
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000911
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000912What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
913================================
914
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000915*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000916
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000917License
918-------
919
920The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
921is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
922changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
923Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
924intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
925durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
926the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
927License::
928
929 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
930
931says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
932to Python 2.1.1.
933
934The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
935License Version 2.
936
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000937Core and builtins
938-----------------
939
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000940- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
941 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
942 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
943 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
944 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
945 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
946 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000947 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000948 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
949 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
950
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000951- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000952
953Extension Modules
954-----------------
955
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000956- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
957 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
958 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
959 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000960
961Library
962-------
963
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000964- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
965 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
966 returned.
967
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000968- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
969
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000970- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
971 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
972
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000973- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
974
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000975- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
976 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000977
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000978- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
979
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000980- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
981
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000982- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000983 the source code is updated and reloaded.
984
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000985Build
986-----
987
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000988- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000989
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000990What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
991================================
992
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000993*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000994
995Core and builtins
996-----------------
997
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000998- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000999 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
1000
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +00001001- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
1002 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
1003 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
1004 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
1005
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001006- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
1007 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
1008
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +00001009- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
1010 constant.
1011
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001012- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
1013 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
1014 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
1015 large), and to anomalies such as
1016 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
1017 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
1018 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
1019 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001020
1021Extension modules
1022-----------------
1023
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +00001024- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
1025 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001026 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
1027 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
1028 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001029
1030Library
1031-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001032
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001033- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001034 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001035 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
1036 --swig-cpp.
1037
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +00001038- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
1039 it is set.
1040
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +00001041- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +00001042
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +00001043- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
1044 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
1045 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
1046 Closes bug #1039270.
1047
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001048- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +00001049
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +00001050 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001051 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
1052 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
1053 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
1054 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
1055 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
1056 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
1057 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
1058 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
1059 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
1060 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
1061 + Updates to documentation.
1062
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +00001063- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
1064 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
1065 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
1066 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
1067
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001068- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001069
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +00001070- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
1071 applications should use the getmember function.
1072
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +00001073- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
1074
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +00001075- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
1076 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
1077 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
1078 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
1079 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
1080 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
1081 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
1082 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
1083 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
1084
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001085- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1086 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001087 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001088
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001089- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1090 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1091 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1092 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1093 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1094 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1095 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1096 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001097
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001098- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1099 the new public features (of which there are many).
1100
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001101- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001102 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1103 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1104 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1105 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001106 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001107
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001108- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1109
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001110- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1111 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1112 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1113 options.
1114
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001115- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1116 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1117 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1118 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1119 conditions under which non-string values work.
1120
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001121Build
1122-----
1123
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001124- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1125 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1126 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1127
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001128- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1129 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1130 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1131 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1132 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001133
1134C API
1135-----
1136
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001137- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1138 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1139
1140- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1141
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001142- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1143 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1144 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1145 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1146 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1147 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1148 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1149 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1150 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1151
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001152- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1153
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001154- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1155 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1156 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001157
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001158Tests
1159-----
1160
1161- test__locale ported to unittest
1162
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001163Mac
1164---
1165
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001166- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1167 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1168 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001169
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001170Tools/Demos
1171-----------
1172
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001173- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1174 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1175 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1176 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1177 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001178
1179
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001180What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1181=================================
1182
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001183*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001184
1185Core and builtins
1186-----------------
1187
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001188- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001189 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1190
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001191- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1192 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1193 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1194 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1195 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1196 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1197 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1198 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001199 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1200 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1201 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1202 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1203 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001204
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001205- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1206 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1207 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1208 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1209 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1210
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001211- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1212
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001213- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1214 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1215
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001216- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1217 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1218 modified the list.
1219
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001220- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1221 functions is now writable.
1222
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001223- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1224 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1225 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1226 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1227
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001228- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1229 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1230 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1231 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1232 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001233
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001234- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1235 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1236
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001237Extension modules
1238-----------------
1239
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001240- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1241
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001242- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1243 data.
1244
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001245- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1246 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1247 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1248 supposed to have been truncated away.
1249
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001250- Added socket.socketpair().
1251
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001252- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1253 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1254
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001255- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001256 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1257
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001258Library
1259-------
1260
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001261- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001262 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001263
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001264- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1265 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1266
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001267- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1268 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1269
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001270- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1271
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001272- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1273 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001274
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001275- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1276 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1277
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001278- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1279
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001280- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1281
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001282- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1283
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001284- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1285 Percivall.
1286
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001287- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1288 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1289
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001290- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1291 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1292 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001293 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001294
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001295- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1296 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1297 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1298 and exponent.
1299
1300- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1301
1302- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001303 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001304 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1305
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001306- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1307 to the readline module.
1308
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001309- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001310 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1311 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001312
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001313- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1314 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1315 contains symlinks.
1316
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001317- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1318 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1319
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001320- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1321 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1322 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1323
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001324- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1325 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1326 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1327 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1328 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1329 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1330 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1331 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1332 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1333 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1334 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1335 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1336 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1337
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001338- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1339
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001340Tools/Demos
1341-----------
1342
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001343- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1344 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1345
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001346- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1347
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001348Build
1349-----
1350
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001351- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1352 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1353 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1354 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1355 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1356 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1357 plans to do so.
1358
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001359- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1360 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1361
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001362- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1363 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1364
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001365- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1366 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1367
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001368- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1369 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1370
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001371- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1372 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1373
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001374C API
1375-----
1376
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001377..
1378
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001379Documentation
1380-------------
1381
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001382- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1383 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1384
1385- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1386 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1387 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001388
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001389New platforms
1390-------------
1391
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001392- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1393
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001394Tests
1395-----
1396
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001397..
1398
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001399Windows
1400-------
1401
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001402- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1403 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1404 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1405 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1406 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1407 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1408 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1409 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1410 the problem.
1411
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001412Mac
1413---
1414
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001415..
1416
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001417
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001418What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1419=================================
1420
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001421*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001422
1423Core and builtins
1424-----------------
1425
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001426- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1427 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1428 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1429 sensitive code.
1430
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001431- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001432 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001433
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001434 @staticmethod
1435 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001436
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001437 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001438
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001439- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1440 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1441 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1442 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1443 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1444 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1445 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1446 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1447 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1448 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1449 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1450
1451 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1452 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1453 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1454 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1455 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1456 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1457 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1458
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001459- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1460 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1461
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001462- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001463 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001464
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001465- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001466 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001467 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1468
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001469- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001470 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1471 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1472
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001473- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1474 types that support garbage collection.
1475
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001476- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1477
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001478- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1479 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1480 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1481 Jython.
1482
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001483- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1484
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001485- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1486 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1487
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001488- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1489 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1490 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001491
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001492- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1493 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1494 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1495
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001496Extension modules
1497-----------------
1498
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001499- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1500
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001501Library
1502-------
1503
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001504- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1505 TIS-620
1506
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001507- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1508 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1509 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1510 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1511 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1512 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1513 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1514 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1515 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1516 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1517
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001518- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1519
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001520- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1521 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1522 same as when the argument is omitted).
1523 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1524
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001525- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1526
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001527- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1528 schemes are offered.
1529
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001530- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1531
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001532- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1533 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1534 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1535
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001536- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1537
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001538- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1539 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1540
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001541- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1542 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1543 when dummy_threading is being used.
1544
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001545- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1546 from a tarfile.
1547
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001548- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001549 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001550
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001551- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1552 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1553 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1554 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1555
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001556- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1557 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1558
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001559- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1560 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1561 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1562 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1563 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1564 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1565 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1566 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1567 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1568 by some other method in progress).
1569
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001570- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1571 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1572 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001573
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001574- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1575
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001576- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1577 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1578 AM Kuchling.
1579
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001580- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1581 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1582 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1583
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001584- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1585 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1586 instead of unsigned.
1587
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001588- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001589 no longer part of the public API.
1590
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001591- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1592 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1593 string methods of the same name).
1594
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001595- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001596 SF patch 945642.
1597
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001598- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1599
1600 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1601
1602 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1603 DocTestSuites.
1604
1605- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1606 that provide thread-local data.
1607
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001608- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1609 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1610
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001611- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1612
1613- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1614 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1615 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1616
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001617- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1618
1619 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1620 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1621 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001622
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001623 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1624 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1625 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1626 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1627
1628 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1629 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1630
1631 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1632 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1633 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1634 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1635
1636 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1637 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1638 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1639 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1640 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1641
1642 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1643 wrapping help output.
1644
1645 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1646 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1647 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001648
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001649C API
1650-----
1651
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001652- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1653 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1654 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1655 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1656 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1657 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1658 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1659 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1660 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1661 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1662 its visible semantics have not changed.
1663
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001664- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1665 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1666
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001667Documentation
1668-------------
1669
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001670- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001671
1672 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001673 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001674
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001675 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001676
1677 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1678
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001679- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001680
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001681Tests
1682-----
1683
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001684- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001685 platforms that use the Makefile.
1686
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001687- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1688 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1689 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1690
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001691
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001692What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1693=================================
1694
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001695*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001696
1697Core and builtins
1698-----------------
1699
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001700- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1701 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1702 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1703 objects now (one object instead of three).
1704
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001705- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1706 Windows DLLs.
1707
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001708- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1709 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001710
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001711- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1712 a new .pyc magic.
1713
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001714- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1715 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1716 be there.
1717
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001718- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1719 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1720 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1721
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001722- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1723 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1724 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1725
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001726- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1727
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001728- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1729 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1730 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001731
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001732- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1733 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1734
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001735- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1736
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001737- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001738 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001739
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001740- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1741
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001742- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1743
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001744- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1745 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1746
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001747- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1748 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1749 Fixes bug #858016 .
1750
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001751- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1752 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1753 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1754
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001755- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1756 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1757 improves their performance (about 35%).
1758
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001759- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1760 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1761 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1762
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001763- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1764 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1765 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1766 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1767
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001768- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1769 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001770 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001771 length is not known).
1772
1773- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1774 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001775 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1776 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001777 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1778
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001779- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1780 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1781
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001782- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1783 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1784 keyword arguments.
1785
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001786- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1787 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1788 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1789
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001790- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1791 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1792 cases.
1793
1794- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1795 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1796 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1797 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1798 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1799 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1800 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1801 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1802 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1803 a release build.
1804
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001805- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1806 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1807
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001808- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001809 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001810
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001811- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1812 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1813 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1814 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1815 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1816 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1817 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1818 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1819 destroyed.
1820
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001821- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1822 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1823 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1824 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1825 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1826 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1827 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1828 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1829
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001830- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1831 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1832 character other than a space.
1833
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001834- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1835 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1836 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1837 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1838 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1839 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1840 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1841 attributes with the same name.
1842
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001843- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1844 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1845 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1846 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1847 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1848 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1849 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1850 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1851 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1852 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1853 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1854 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1855 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1856 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001857
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001858- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1859 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1860 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1861 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1862 This has been repaired.
1863
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001864- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1865
1866- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1867
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001868- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1869 over a sequence.
1870
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001871- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001872 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001873
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001874- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1875
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001876- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1877 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1878 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1879 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1880 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1881 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1882 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1883 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1884
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001885- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1886 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1887 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1888
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001889- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1890 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1891 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1892 freelist.
1893
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001894- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1895 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1896
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001897- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1898 number.
1899
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001900- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1901 a TypeError exception.
1902
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001903- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1904 820195.
1905
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001906- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1907 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1908 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1909
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001910- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001911 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1912 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001913
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001914- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1915 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1916 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1917
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001918- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1919 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001920 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001921
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001922- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001923 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1924 the first call.
1925
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001926
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001927Extension modules
1928-----------------
1929
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001930- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1931 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1932
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001933- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1934 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1935 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1936 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1937 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1938 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1939 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001940
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001941- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1942
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001943- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1944
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001945- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1946 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1947
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001948- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1949 fewer false positives.
1950
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001951- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1952 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1953
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001954- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001955 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1956
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001957- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001958 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001959 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001960 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1961 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001962
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001963- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1964 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1965 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1966 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1967
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001968- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1969 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1970 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1971 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1972 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1973 #897625.
1974
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001975- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1976 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1977
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001978- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1979 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1980 and pops on either side of the deque.
1981
1982- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1983 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1984
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001985- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1986 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1987 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1988 other functions that expect a function argument.
1989
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001990- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1991
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001992- os.getsid was added.
1993
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001994- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1995 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1996 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1997
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001998- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1999
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00002000- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
2001
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00002002- readline.clear_history was added.
2003
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00002004- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
2005
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00002006- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
2007
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00002008- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
2009
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00002010- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
2011
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00002012- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
2013
2014- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
2015
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00002016- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
2017
2018- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
2019
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002020- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
2021 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
2022 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
2023
2024- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
2025 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
2026 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
2027 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
2028 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
2029 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
2030 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
2031
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00002032- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
2033 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
2034 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
2035 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002036
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002037- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002038 iterators from a single iterable.
2039
2040- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
2041 of raising a TypeError exception.
2042
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00002043- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
2044 as parameter.
2045
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002046Library
2047-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00002048
Armin Rigoa871ef22006-02-08 12:53:56 +00002049- Added a new module: cProfile, a C profiler with the same interface as the
2050 profile module. cProfile avoids some of the drawbacks of the hotshot
2051 profiler and provides a bit more information than the other two profilers.
2052 Based on "lsprof" (patch #1212837).
2053
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00002054- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
2055
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00002056- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
2057 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
2058 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002059
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00002060- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
2061 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
2062 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00002063
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00002064- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00002065
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00002066- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
2067 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00002068
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00002069- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
2070 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
2071
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002072- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
2073
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002074- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002075 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002076
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002077- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00002078 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002079
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00002080- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
2081
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00002082- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
2083 on cygwin and mingw32.
2084
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00002085- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
2086
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00002087- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
2088 module.
2089
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00002090- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2091 installation scheme for all platforms.
2092
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002093- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002094 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002095
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002096- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2097 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2098 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2099
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002100- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2101 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2102 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2103
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002104- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2105
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002106- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2107
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002108- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2109 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2110
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002111- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2112 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2113 type pattern with the same value exists.
2114
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002115- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2116 when run from the command prompt).
2117
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002118- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2119 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2120
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002121- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2122 default sort).
2123
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002124- Added global runctx function to profile module
2125
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002126- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2127
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002128- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2129
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002130- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2131
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002132- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002133 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2134 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2135 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2136 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2137 accordingly.
2138
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002139- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2140 decoding standards.
2141
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002142- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2143 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2144 called for all requests.
2145
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002146- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2147 they are passed to the compiler.
2148
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002149- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2150 indent, width and depth.
2151
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002152- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2153 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2154
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002155- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2156 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2157
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002158- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2159
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002160- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2161
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002162- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2163
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002164- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2165 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2166
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002167- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002168 for better performance.
2169
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002170- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002171
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002172- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2173 a string).
2174
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002175- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2176
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002177- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2178
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002179- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2180
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002181- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2182
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002183- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2184 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2185 list of fieldnames.
2186
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002187- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2188 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2189
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002190- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2191
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002192- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2193 empty lists.
2194
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002195- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2196 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2197 and shelves.
2198
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002199- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2200 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2201
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002202- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002203 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2204 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002205
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002206- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2207 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002208 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002209
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002210- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002211 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2212 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2213
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002214- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2215 and removed in Py2.4.
2216
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002217- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2218
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002219- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2220
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002221Tools/Demos
2222-----------
2223
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002224- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2225 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2226
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002227- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2228
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002229- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2230 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2231 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2232 destination in situations where both files are given.
2233
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002234- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2235 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2236 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2237 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2238
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002239- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2240
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002241- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2242 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2243 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2244 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2245 now.
2246
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002247- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2248 in effect
2249
2250- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2251 C-c C-h
2252
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002253- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2254 -d option was given.
2255
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002256Build
2257-----
2258
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002259- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2260 build under OS X.
2261
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002262- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2263 --enable-profiling.
2264
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002265- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2266 is configured --with-tsc.
2267
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002268- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2269 on AMD64.
2270
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002271- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2272 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2273
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002274- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2275 removed.
2276
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002277- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2278 supported (see PEP 11).
2279
2280- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2281
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002282- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2283
2284- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2285 (see PEP 11).
2286
2287- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2288 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2289
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002290C API
2291-----
2292
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002293- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2294 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2295 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2296
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002297- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2298 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2299 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2300 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2301
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002302- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2303 generator objects.
2304
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002305- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2306 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002307 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2308 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002309
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002310- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2311 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2312
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002313- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2314 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2315 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2316 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2317 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2318
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002319- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2320 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2321 about 10% faster.
2322
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002323- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2324 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2325
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002326- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2327 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2328 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2329 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2330
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002331Windows
2332-------
2333
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002334- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2335 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2336 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2337 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2338
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002339- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2340 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2341 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2342
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002343
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002344What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2345===============================
2346
2347*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2348
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002349IDLE
2350----
2351
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002352- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2353 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2354 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2355 context-menu actions.
2356
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002357- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2358 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2359 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2360 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2361 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2362 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2363 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2364 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2365 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2366
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002367
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002368What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2369=============================================
2370
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002371*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002372
2373Core and builtins
2374-----------------
2375
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002376- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002377 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002378 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2379
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002380Extension modules
2381-----------------
2382
2383- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2384 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2385 than once. This has been fixed.
2386
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002387- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2388 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2389 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2390 call.
2391
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002392- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2393
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002394Library
2395-------
2396
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002397- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2398 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2399
2400- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2401 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2402 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2403 restored.
2404
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002405IDLE
2406----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002407
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002408- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002409
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002410Build
2411-----
2412
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002413- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2414 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2415
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002416C API
2417-----
2418
2419Windows
2420-------
2421
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002422- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2423 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2424
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002425- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2426
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002427Mac
2428---
2429
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002430- Various fixes to pimp.
2431
2432- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2433
2434- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2435 more problems than it solves.
2436
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002437
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002438What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2439=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002440
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002441*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2442
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002443Core and builtins
2444-----------------
2445
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002446- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2447 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2448
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002449- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2450 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002451 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002452
2453- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2454 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2455 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002456 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002457
2458- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2459 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002460
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002461- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2462 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2463 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2464
2465- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002466 770247.
2467
2468- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002469
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002470Extension modules
2471-----------------
2472
2473- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2474 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2475
2476- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2477
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002478- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2479
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002480- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2481 contained within the _strptime module.
2482
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002483- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2484 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2485
2486- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002487 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2488
2489- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2490 the find_class attribute, if present.
2491
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002492- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002493
2494 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2495 (SF bug 763298).
2496
2497 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002498 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2499 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2500 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002501
2502 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2503
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002504Library
2505-------
2506
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002507- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2508
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002509- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2510 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2511 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2512 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2513 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2514 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2515 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2516 or Tester().
2517
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002518- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2519 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2520 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2521 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2522 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2523 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2524 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2525 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2526 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002527
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002528 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002529
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002530- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2531 weren't before was an oversight.
2532
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002533- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2534 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2535
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002536- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2537 when there are no lines.
2538
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002539- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2540 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2541
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002542- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2543 to child processes.
2544
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002545- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2546
2547- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2548
2549- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2550 xmlrpclib.
2551
2552- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2553 responses.
2554
2555- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2556 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2557
2558- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2559 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2560 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2561
2562- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2563 used as patterns.
2564
2565- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2566 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2567 than Tk 8.3.
2568
2569- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2570
2571- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002572
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002573Tools/Demos
2574-----------
2575
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002576- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2577
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002578- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2579
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002580- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002581
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002582Build
2583-----
2584
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002585- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2586
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002587- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2588
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002589- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2590 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002591
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002592- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2593 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2594 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002595
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002596C API
2597-----
2598
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002599- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2600 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2601
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002602Windows
2603-------
2604
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002605- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2606 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2607 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2608 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2609 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2610 Python exception ::
2611
2612 thread.error: can't start new thread
2613
2614 is raised now.
2615
2616- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2617 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2618 instead of from DLL teardown.
2619
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002620Mac
2621---
2622
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002623- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002624 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002625 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2626 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2627 the executable in the bundle.
2628
2629- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002630
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002631- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2632
2633- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2634 on Panther.
2635
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002636What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2637================================
2638
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002639*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002640
2641Core and builtins
2642-----------------
2643
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002644- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2645 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2646 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2647 with the -i option.
2648
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002649- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2650 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2651
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002652- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2653 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2654
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002655- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2656 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2657 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2658 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2659 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2660 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2661 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2662 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2663 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2664 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2665 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2666 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2667 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002668
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002669- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2670 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2671 embedded in a lambda expression.
2672
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002673- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2674 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2675 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2676 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2677 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2678
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002679- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2680 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2681 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2682
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002683- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2684 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2685
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002686- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2687 It's writable again.
2688
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002689- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2690 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2691 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002692 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002693
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002694- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2695 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2696 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2697
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002698Extension modules
2699-----------------
2700
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002701- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2702 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2703
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002704- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2705 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2706 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2707 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2708
2709- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2710 collection.
2711
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002712- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2713 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2714 unique within a single program run.
2715
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002716- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2717 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2718
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002719- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2720 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2721
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002722- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2723 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002724
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002725- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2726
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002727- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2728 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2729
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002730- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2731 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2732 for many BSD-derived systems.
2733
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002734
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002735Library
2736-------
2737
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002738- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2739 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2740 primary ones:
2741
2742 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2743 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2744 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2745
2746 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2747 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2748 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2749 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2750 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2751 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2752
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002753- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2754 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2755 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2756 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2757 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2758 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2759 argument.
2760
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002761- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2762 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2763 in the archive.
2764
2765- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2766 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2767
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002768- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2769 569574).
2770
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002771- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2772 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2773 no more.
2774
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002775- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2776 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2777 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2778 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2779 code coverage.
2780
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002781- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2782 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2783 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002784 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2785 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002786
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002787- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2788 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2789 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002790 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002791
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002792- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2793
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002794- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2795 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2796 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2797 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2798
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002799- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2800 handling.
2801
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002802- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2803 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2804
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002805- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2806 in socket.py.
2807
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002808- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2809
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002810- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2811 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2812 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2813 opener with proxy support.
2814
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002815- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2816
2817- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2818
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002819Tools/Demos
2820-----------
2821
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002822- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2823
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002824- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2825
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002826- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2827 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002828
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002829- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2830 files.
2831
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002832Build
2833-----
2834
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002835- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002836 different root directory.
2837
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002838C API
2839-----
2840
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002841- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2842 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2843 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2844 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2845 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2846 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2847 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2848 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2849 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2850 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2851
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002852- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2853 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2854 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2855 from Python.
2856
2857
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002858New platforms
2859-------------
2860
2861None this time.
2862
2863Tests
2864-----
2865
2866- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2867 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2868
2869Windows
2870-------
2871
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002872- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2873
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002874- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2875 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2876 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2877 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2878 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2879 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2880 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2881 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2882 that's what it's for.
2883
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002884Mac
2885---
2886
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002887- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2888 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2889 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2890 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002891- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2892 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2893- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002894
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002895SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2896------------------------------------
2897
2898430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2899598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2900622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2901661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2902683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2903697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2904713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2905724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2906727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2907729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2908730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2909731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2910732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2911733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2912735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2913740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2914744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2915745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2916747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2917749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2918751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2919753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2920755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2921757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2922760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2923
2924
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002925What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2926================================
2927
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002928*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002929
2930Core and builtins
2931-----------------
2932
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002933- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2934 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2935
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002936- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2937 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2938 and cannot be strings).
2939
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002940- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2941 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2942 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2943 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2944
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002945- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2946 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2947 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2948 Python itself.
2949
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002950- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2951 the referenced object, if it has one.
2952
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002953- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2954 the thread started at
2955 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2956
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002957- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2958 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2959 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2960 placed on a list index.
2961
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002962- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2963 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2964 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2965 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2966
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002967- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2968 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2969 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2970 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2971 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2972 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2973 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2974
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002975- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2976 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2977 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2978 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2979 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2980
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002981- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2982 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002983
2984- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2985 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2986 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2987 #693195.)
2988
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002989- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2990 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002991
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002992- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002993 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002994 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2995 interpreter executions, would fail.
2996
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002997- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002998 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002999 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003000
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003001Extension modules
3002-----------------
3003
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00003004- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
3005 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
3006 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
3007 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
3008
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00003009- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
3010 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
3011
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00003012- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
3013 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
3014 and Greg Chapman.)
3015
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003016- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
3017 recursively.
3018
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00003019- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00003020 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
3021 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
3022 leaks.
3023
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00003024- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
3025
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00003026- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
3027 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
3028 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
3029 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
3030 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
3031 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
3032 #705836.
3033
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00003034- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00003035 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
3036
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00003037- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
3038 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
3039 See SF bug #692416.
3040
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00003041- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
3042 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
3043
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00003044- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
3045 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
3046 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003047
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003048- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00003049 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
3050 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
3051
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00003052- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
3053 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
3054 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
3055 timeouts to work properly.
3056
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003057Library
3058-------
3059
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003060- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
3061 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
3062 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
3063 future release.
3064
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00003065- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
3066 for querying platform dependent features.
3067
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00003068- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00003069
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00003070- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
3071 pickle protocol versions.
3072
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00003073- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
3074 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
3075 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
3076
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00003077- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
3078
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00003079- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
3080 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
3081 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
3082 modules.
3083
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00003084- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
3085 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
3086 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
3087
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003088- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
3089 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
3090
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003091- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3092 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3093 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3094
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003095- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003096 MS Office extensions.
3097
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003098- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3099 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3100
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003101- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3102 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3103
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003104- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3105 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3106 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3107 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3108 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3109 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3110
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003111- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3112 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3113 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003114
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003115- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3116 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3117 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3118
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003119- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3120
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003121- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3122 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3123 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3124
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003125Tools/Demos
3126-----------
3127
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003128- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3129 See the module docstring for details.
3130
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003131Build
3132-----
3133
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003134- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3135 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003136
3137C API
3138-----
3139
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003140- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3141
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003142- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3143 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3144 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3145
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003146- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3147 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003148
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003149 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3150 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3151 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003152
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003153- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003154 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3155
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003156- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3157 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3158 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003159
3160New platforms
3161-------------
3162
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003163None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003164
3165Tests
3166-----
3167
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003168- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3169 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003170
3171Windows
3172-------
3173
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003174- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3175 function.
3176
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003177- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3178 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003179
3180Mac
3181---
3182
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003183- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3184 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003185
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003186- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3187 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003188
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003189- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3190 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3191 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003192
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003193- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003194 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3195 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003196
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003197- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3198 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003199
3200
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003201What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3202=================================
3203
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003204*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003205
3206Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003207-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003208
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003209- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3210 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3211 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3212
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003213- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3214 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3215 (SF patch #664376.)
3216
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003217- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3218 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3219 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3220 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3221 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3222 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003223 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003224
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003225- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3226 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3227 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3228 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003229 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003230
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003231- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3232 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3233 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3234 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3235 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3236 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3237 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3238 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3239 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3240 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3241 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3242
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003243- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3244 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3245 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3246 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3247 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3248 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3249
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003250- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3251 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3252
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003253- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3254 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3255 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3256 case.)
3257
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003258- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3259 passed as unicode strings.
3260
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003261- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3262 See SF bug #683467.
3263
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003264- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3265 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3266
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003267- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3268
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003269- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3270
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003271- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3272 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3273 arguments.
3274
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003275- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3276 See SF bug #667147.
3277
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003278- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003279 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003280 See SF bug #676155.
3281
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003282- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003283 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003284 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3285 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3286 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3287 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3288 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3289 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003290
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003291Extension modules
3292-----------------
3293
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003294- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3295 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3296 tp_as_number pointer.
3297
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003298- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3299 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3300 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3301 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3302 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3303
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003304- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3305
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003306- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3307
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003308- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003309 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003310 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3311 patch #678531.)
3312
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003313- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3314 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3315
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003316- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3317 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3318
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003319- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3320
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003321- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3322 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3323 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3324
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003325- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3326
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003327- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3328 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3329
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003330- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003331
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003332- datetime changes:
3333
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003334 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3335
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003336 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3337 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3338 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3339 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3340 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3341 now.
3342
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003343 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003344 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3345 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003346
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003347 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003348 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003349 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3350 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3351 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3352 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003353
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003354 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3355 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3356 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003357 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3358
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003359 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3360 by a later example coded by Guido.
3361
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003362 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003363 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3364 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3365 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003366 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3367 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3368
3369 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3370 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3371 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3372 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3373 tzinfo subclass instance.
3374
3375 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3376 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3377 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3378 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3379 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3380 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3381 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3382 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003383
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003384 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3385 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3386 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3387 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3388 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003389 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3390
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003391 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003392
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003393 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3394 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3395 as a naive datetime object.
3396
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003397 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3398 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3399 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3400
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003401 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3402 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3403 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3404 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3405 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3406 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3407 comparison.
3408
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003409 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3410 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3411 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3412 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003413 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003414
3415 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003416
3417 and ::
3418
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003419 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3420
3421 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3422 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3423 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3424 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3425
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003426 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3427 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3428 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3429 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3430 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3431
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003432 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3433 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003434 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3435 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003436
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003437Library
3438-------
3439
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003440- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3441 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3442
3443- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3444 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3445 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3446 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3447 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3448 See PEP 307 for details.
3449
3450- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3451 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3452
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003453- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3454 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003455 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003456 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3457 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003458 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003459
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003460- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3461 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3462
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003463- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3464 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3465 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3466
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003467- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3468
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003469- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3470 exception.
3471
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003472- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3473 class.
3474
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003475- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3476 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3477 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3478
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003479- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3480 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3481
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003482- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003483 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3484 See SF bug #659228.
3485
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003486- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3487 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3488 See SF patch #651082.
3489
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003490- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003491
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003492- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3493 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3494
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003495- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003496 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003497
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003498- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3499 DOS paths from other platforms.
3500
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003501Tools/Demos
3502-----------
3503
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003504- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3505 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3506 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3507 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3508 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3509 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3510 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3511 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3512 example:
3513
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003514 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3515 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003516
3517 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3518
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003519
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003520Build
3521-----
3522
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003523- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3524 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3525 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003526 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3527
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003528 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3529
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003530- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3531 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3532 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3533 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3534 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3535 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3536 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3537 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3538 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3539
3540- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3541 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3542 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3543 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3544
3545- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3546 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3547
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003548C API
3549-----
3550
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003551- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3552 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003553
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003554- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3555 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3556 tp_as_number pointer.
3557
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003558- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3559 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3560 (SF #681367)
3561
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003562- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3563 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3564 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3565 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003566
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003567Tests
3568-----
3569
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003570- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003571 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3572 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3573 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3574 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3575 pydoc.)
3576
3577- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3578
3579- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003580
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003581Windows
3582-------
3583
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003584- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3585 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3586 time).
3587
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003588- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3589 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3590
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003591- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3592 release without strong cryptography.
3593
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003594- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003595 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003596
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003597- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3598 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3599
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003600Mac
3601---
3602
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003603- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3604 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003605
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003606- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3607 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3608 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003609
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003610- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3611 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003612
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003613- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3614 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3615 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3616 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003617
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003618- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003619 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3620 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3621 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003622
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003623
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003624What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003625=================================
3626
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003627*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003628
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003629Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003630--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003631
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003632- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3633
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003634- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3635 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003636 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003637 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003638 a different meaning than before.
3639
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003640- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003641 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003642 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003643
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003644- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003645 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003646 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003647
3648- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3649 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3650 and deallocation.
3651
3652- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3653 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3654
3655- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3656 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3657 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3658 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3659 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3660
3661- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3662 now detected by the garbage collector.
3663
3664- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3665 [SF bug 519621]
3666
3667- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3668 identifier.
3669
3670- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3671 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3672 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3673 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3674 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3675 [SF bug 563060]
3676
3677- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3678 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3679 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3680 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3681 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3682
3683- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3684 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3685 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3686
3687- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3688
3689- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3690 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3691 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3692 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3693 state of the slots would be lost.)
3694
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003695Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003696-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003697
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003698- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003699 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3700 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3701 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3702 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003703 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3704 Jython 2.1.
3705
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003706- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003707 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003708 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3709 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3710 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3711 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3712 these, see PEP 302.
3713
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003714- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3715 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3716 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3717
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003718- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3719 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3720 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3721
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003722- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3723 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3724 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3725
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003726- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3727 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3728 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3729 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3730 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3731 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3732 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3733 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3734 releases or implementations.
3735
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003736- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003737 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3738 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003739
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003740- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3741 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3742
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003743- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3744 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3745 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3746
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003747- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3748 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3749
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003750- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3751 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003752 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3753 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003754
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003755- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3756 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3757 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3758 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3759 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3760
3761 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3762 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3763 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3764 pattern.
3765
3766 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3767 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3768 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3769 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3770
3771 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3772 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3773 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3774 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3775 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3776 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3777
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003778- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3779 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3780 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3781 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3782 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3783 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3784 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3785 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003786
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003787- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3788 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3789 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3790 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3791 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003792 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3793 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3794 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3795 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3796 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3797 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3798 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003799
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003800- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3801 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3802
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003803- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3804 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3805 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3806 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3807 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3808 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3809 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3810 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3811 to Zack Weinberg!
3812
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003813- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3814 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3815 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3816 type. This has been fixed now.
3817
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003818- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3819 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3820 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3821
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003822- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3823 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3824 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3825 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3826 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3827 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3828 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3829 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003830 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003831
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003832- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3833 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3834 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003835
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003836- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3837 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3838 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3839 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3840 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3841 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3842 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3843 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003844 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003845 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3846 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3847
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003848- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3849 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3850 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3851 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3852 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3853 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3854 this.)
3855
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003856- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3857 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003858 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003859 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003860 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3861 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003862 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3863 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003864
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003865- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3866 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3867 currently running.
3868
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003869- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3870 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3871 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3872 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3873
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003874- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3875 as directory names.
3876
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003877- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3878 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3879
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003880- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3881 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3882
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003883- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003884 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3885 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003886
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003887- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3888 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3889 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3890 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3891 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3892
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003893- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3894 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3895 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3896 removed.
3897
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003898- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3899 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3900 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3901
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003902- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3903 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3904 to __debug__.
3905
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003906- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3907 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3908 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3909
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003910- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3911 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3912 deprecated now.
3913
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003914- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3915 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3916 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003917
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003918- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3919 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3920 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3921 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3922 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003923
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003924- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3925 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3926
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003927- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3928 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3929 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003930 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003931 is backward compatible.
3932
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003933- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3934 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3935 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3936 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3937 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3938
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003939- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3940 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3941 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3942 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3943 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3944 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003945
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003946- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3947 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3948
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003949- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3950 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3951
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003952- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3953 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3954 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3955 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3956 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3957
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003958- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3959 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3960 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3961
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003962- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003963 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3964
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003965- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3966 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3967 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003968
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003969- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3970 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3971
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003972- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3973 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3974 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3975
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003976- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3977
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003978Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003979-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003980
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003981- Added three operators to the operator module:
3982 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3983 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3984 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3985
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003986- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3987
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003988- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3989 archives.
3990
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003991- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3992 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3993 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3994
3995 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3996
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003997- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3998 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3999 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00004000 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004001
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00004002- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
4003 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
4004 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
4005 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00004006 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
4007 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
4008 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
4009 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00004010
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00004011- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
4012 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00004013
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00004014- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
4015
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00004016- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
4017 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
4018
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00004019- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
4020 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
4021 supported.
4022
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00004023- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
4024
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00004025- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
4026 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00004027
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00004028- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
4029 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
4030
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00004031- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
4032
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004033- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
4034 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
4035
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00004036- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
4037 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
4038 functions but callable type objects.
4039
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004040- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004041 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004042 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004043
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00004044- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
4045 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00004046
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00004047- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
4048 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00004049
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00004050- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
4051 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
4052 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
4053 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
4054
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00004055- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
4056 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00004057
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00004058- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
4059 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
4060 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
4061 and __imul__.
4062
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00004063- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00004064 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
4065 is called.
4066
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00004067- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
4068 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
4069 interpreter was compiled.
4070
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004071- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
4072 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
4073 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004074 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004075 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
4076 1, not 2.
4077
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00004078- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
4079 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
4080 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
4081 limit.
4082
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00004083- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
4084 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
4085 bug #623464.
4086
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00004087- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
4088 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
4089 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
4090 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4091
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004092Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004093-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004094
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004095- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4096
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004097- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4098 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4099 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4100 with Python 2.3a2.
4101
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004102- os.path exposes getctime.
4103
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004104- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004105 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004106 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004107 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004108 unit tests of floating point results.
4109
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004110- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4111 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4112 has been increased.
4113
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004114- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4115 executed.
4116
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004117- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4118 postinstallation script.
4119
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004120- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4121 test the current module.
4122
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004123- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004124 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4125 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4126 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4127 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4128
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004129- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004130 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004131 Ward's Optik package.
4132
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004133- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4134 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4135 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4136 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4137
4138- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4139 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004140 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004141
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004142- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4143 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4144 shelf are binary pickles.
4145
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004146- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4147 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4148
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004149- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4150 modules are iterators now.
4151
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004152- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4153 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4154 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4155 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4156 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4157 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004158
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004159- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4160 with their entity value.
4161
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004162- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4163
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004164- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4165 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004166
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004167- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4168 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004169 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004170
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004171- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4172 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4173 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4174 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4175 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4176 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4177 main():
4178
4179 import locale
4180 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4181
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004182- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4183 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4184
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004185- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4186 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4187 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4188 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4189 to the new standard.
4190
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004191- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4192 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4193 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4194 an extension to the database.
4195
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004196- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4197 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4198 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4199 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004200 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004201
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004202- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004203 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004204
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004205- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4206 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4207 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4208 bounded integers.
4209
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004210- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4211 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4212 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4213 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4214 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4215 in existence.
4216
4217 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4218 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4219 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4220 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4221 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4222 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4223
4224 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4225 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4226 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4227 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4228
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004229- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4230 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4231 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4232
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004233- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4234
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004235- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4236 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4237 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4238 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4239
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004240- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4241 argument.
4242
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004243- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4244 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4245 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4246 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4247 [SF patch 560794].
4248
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004249- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4250 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4251 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004252 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4253 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4254 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004255
4256- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4257 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004258
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004259- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4260 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4261 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4262 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004263
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004264- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4265 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4266 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4267 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4268 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4269
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004270- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004271
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004272- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4273
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004274- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4275 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4276 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4277 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4278 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4279 identical to None.
4280
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004281- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4282 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4283 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4284 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4285 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4286 results now.
4287
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004288- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4289 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4290
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004291- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4292 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4293 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4294 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4295 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4296 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4297 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4298 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4299
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004300- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4301
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004302- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4303 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4304
4305- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4306 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4307 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4308 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4309 and other systems.
4310
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004311- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4312 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4313 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4314 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 +00004315 work well with these.
4316
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004317- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4318
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004319- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004320 connections.
4321
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004322- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4323 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4324 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4325
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004326- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4327 sets
4328
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004329- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4330 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4331 name.
4332
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004333- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4334 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4335 passed in.
4336
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004337- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004338 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004339 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4340 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004341
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004342- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4343
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004344- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4345
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004346- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4347 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4348 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4349
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004350- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4351 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4352 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4353 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004354 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004355
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004356- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004357 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004358 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004359
4360- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4361 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4362 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4363
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004364- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004365 the value of its expression argument.
4366
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004367- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4368 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4369 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4370
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004371- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4372 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4373 skipstone browser was included.
4374
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004375- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4376 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4377
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004378Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004379-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004380
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004381- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4382 names in addition to accepting file names.
4383
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004384- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4385 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4386 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4387 still used and useful.)
4388
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004389- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4390 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4391 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4392 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004393
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004394- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4395 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4396 the generated binary.
4397
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004398Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004399-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004400
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004401- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4402
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004403- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4404 except in the hands of experts.
4405
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004406- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004407 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4408 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4409 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004410
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004411- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4412 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4413 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4414 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4415 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4416 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4417 builds.
4418
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004419- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4420 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4421 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4422 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4423 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4424 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4425 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4426 new type.
4427
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004428- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004429
4430 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4431 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4432 positive infinities.
4433
4434 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4435 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4436 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4437 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4438 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4439 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4440 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4441
4442 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4443
4444 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4445
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004446- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4447 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4448 size of the executable.
4449
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004450- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4451 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4452 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4453 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004454
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004455- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4456
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004457- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4458 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4459 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004460
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004461- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4462 well as Unix.
4463
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004464- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4465 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4466 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4467 modules in the README file for details.
4468
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004469C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004470-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004471
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004472- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4473 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004474 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004475 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004476 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004477
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004478- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4479 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4480 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4481 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4482 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4483 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004484 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004485 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4486 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4487 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4488 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4489 aligned.)
4490
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004491- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4492 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4493 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4494
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004495- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4496 level.
4497
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004498- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4499 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4500 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4501 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4502 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4503
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004504- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4505 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4506 code.
4507
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004508- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4509 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4510 adjusting for negative indices.
4511
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004512- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4513 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4514 object.
4515
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004516- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4517 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4518 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4519
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004520- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4521 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004522
4523- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4524
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004525- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4526 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4527 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4528 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4529
4530- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4531
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004532- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004533
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004534- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004535 without going through the buffer API.
4536
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004537- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004538
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004539- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4540 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4541 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4542 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4543
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004544- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4545 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4546
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004547- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004548 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4549
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004550New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004551-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004552
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004553- OpenVMS is now supported.
4554
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004555- AtheOS is now supported.
4556
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004557- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4558
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004559- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4560
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004561Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004562-----
4563
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004564- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4565 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4566 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004567
4568Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004569-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004570
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004571- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4572 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4573 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4574 bugs.
4575 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004576 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004577 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4578 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004579 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004580
4581- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004582 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004583
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004584- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4585 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4586
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004587- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4588 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004589 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004590 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4591
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004592- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4593 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4594 use files" uninstall option).
4595
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004596- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4597
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004598- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4599 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4600
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004601- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4602 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4603 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4604
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004605- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4606 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4607 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4608 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4609 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004610 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4611 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4612 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004613
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004614- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004615 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004616 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4617 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4618 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4619 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4620 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4621 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4622 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4623 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4624 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4625 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4626 work around.
4627
4628- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4629 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4630 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4631 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4632 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4633 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4634 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4635 specified with O_CREAT too).
4636
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004637Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004638----
4639
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004640- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004641
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004642- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4643 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4644 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4645
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004646- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4647 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4648 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4649
4650- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4651 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4652 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4653 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4654 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4655 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4656 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4657 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004658
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004659- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4660 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4661 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004662
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004663- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4664 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4665 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4666 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4667 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004668
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004669- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4670 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4671 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004672
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004673- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4674 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004675
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004676- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4677 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4678 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4679 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4680 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004681
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004682- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4683 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4684 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4685
4686- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4687 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4688 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004689
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004690- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4691 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4692 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4693 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004694 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004695
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004696- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4697 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004698
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004699- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4700 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004701
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004702- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004703 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004704 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4705 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004706
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004707
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004708What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004709===============================
4710
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004711*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4712
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004713Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004714--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004715
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004716- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4717 with a custom metaclass.
4718
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004719Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004720-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004721
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004722- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4723 are proxies.
4724
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004725Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004726-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004727
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004728- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4729 very short strings.
4730
4731- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4732 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4733 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4734 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4735 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4736
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004737Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004738-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004739
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004740- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4741 close or delete time).
4742
4743- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4744 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4745
4746- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4747
4748- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004749 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004750
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004751Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004752-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004753
4754Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004755-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004756
4757C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004758-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004759
4760New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004761-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004762
4763Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004764-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004765
4766Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004767-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004768
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004769- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4770
4771- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4772 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4773
4774- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4775 deleted at process exit time.
4776
4777- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4778 in backslash.
4779
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004780Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004781----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004782
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004783- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4784 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4785 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4786
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004787
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004788What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004789===========================
4790
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004791*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4792
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004793Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004794--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004795
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004796- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4797 been extensively updated. See
4798
4799 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4800
4801 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4802
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004803- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4804 deleted!
4805
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004806- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4807 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4808 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4809 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4810 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4811
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004812- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4813
4814 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4815 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4816
4817 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4818 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4819 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4820 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4821 supported anyway.
4822
4823 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4824 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4825
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004826- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4827 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4828 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4829 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4830 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004831
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004832- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4833 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4834 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4835
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004836Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004837-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004838
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004839- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4840 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4841 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4842 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4843 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4844 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004845 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4846 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4847 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4848 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004849
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004850- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4851 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4852 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4853
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004854Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004855-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004856
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004857- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4858
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004859Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004860-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004861
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004862- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4863 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4864 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4865 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4866 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4867 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4868
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004869- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4870
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004871- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4872
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004873- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4874
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004875- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4876 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4877 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4878
4879- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4880
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004881Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004882-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004883
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004884- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4885 off a search on Google.
4886
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004887Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004888-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004889
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004890- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4891 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4892 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4893 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4894 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4895 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4896 other platforms should do likewise.
4897
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004898- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4899 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4900 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4901
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004902C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004903-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004904
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004905- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4906 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4907 producing key-value pairs.
4908
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004909- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004910 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004911 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4912 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4913 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4914 previously went unchallenged.
4915
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004916New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004917-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004918
4919Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004920-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004921
4922Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004923-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004924
4925Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004926----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004927
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004928- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4929 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004930
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004931- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4932 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4933 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4934 home.
4935
4936
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004937What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004938===========================
4939
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004940*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4941
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004942Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004943--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004944
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004945- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4946 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004947
4948 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004949 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004950
4951 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4952 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004953 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004954 This needs to be documented.
4955
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004956- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4957 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4958
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004959- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4960 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4961 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4962
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004963- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4964 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4965
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004966- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4967 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4968 class forbids it).
4969
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004970- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4971 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4972 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4973
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004974- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4975
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004976Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004977-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004978
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004979- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4980 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004981 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004982
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004983- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4984 (like 1 + '').
4985
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004986Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004987-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004988
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004989- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4990 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4991 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4992 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004993 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004994 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4995
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004996- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4997 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4998 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4999 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
5000
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005001- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
5002 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005003 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
5004 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
5005 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005006
5007- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
5008 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005009
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00005010- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
5011 bytes on its input.
5012
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005013Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005014-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005015
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005016- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00005017 convenience function.
5018
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005019- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
5020 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
5021 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005022 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
5023 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
5024 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
5025 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
5026 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
5027 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005028
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00005029- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
5030 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
5031 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
5032 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
5033
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00005034- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
5035 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
5036 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
5037
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005038- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
5039 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
5040 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
5041 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
5042
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005043- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
5044 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005045 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005046 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
5047 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
5048 new -l and -e options.
5049
5050- statcache is now deprecated.
5051
5052- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
5053 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005054 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005055 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
5056 time properly taken into account.
5057
5058- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
5059 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
5060 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
5061 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
5062
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005063Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005064-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005065
5066Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005067-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005068
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005069- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
5070 is built with libdb3 if available.
5071
5072- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
5073
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005074C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005075-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005076
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00005077- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
5078 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
5079 PySequence_Size().
5080
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005081- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
5082
5083- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
5084 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
5085 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
5086
5087- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
5088 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
5089
5090- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5091 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5092
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005093New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005094-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005095
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005096- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5097 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5098
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005099- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5100 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5101
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005102- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5103
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005104Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005105-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005106
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005107- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5108 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5109
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005110Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005111-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005112
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005113Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005114----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005115
5116- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5117 removed completely in the next release.
5118
5119- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5120 OSX.
5121
5122- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5123 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5124
5125- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5126
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005127
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005128What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005129===========================
5130
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005131*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5132
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005133Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005134--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005135
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005136- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005137 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005138 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005139 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5140 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005141 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5142 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005143 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5144 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005145
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005146- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5147 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5148
5149- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5150 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5151
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005152Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005153-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005154
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005155- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5156 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5157 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5158 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5159 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5160 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5161 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5162 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5163
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005164- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5165 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5166 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5167 example).
5168
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005169- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005170 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005171 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005172 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005173
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005174- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5175 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5176 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005177 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005178
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005179- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5180 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5181 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5182 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5183 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5184 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5185
5186 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5187
5188 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5189
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005190Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005191-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005192
5193- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5194
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005195- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5196
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005197- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5198 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005199
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005200- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5201 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5202 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5203 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5204 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5205 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005206 attributes.
5207
5208- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5209 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5210 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005211
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005212- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5213 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5214 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005215
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005216- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5217 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5218 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005219 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5220 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5221
5222- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5223 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005224
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005225Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005226-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005227
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005228- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5229 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5230
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005231- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5232 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5233 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5234 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5235
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005236- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5237 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5238 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5239 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5240
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005241 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5242 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5243 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5244 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5245 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5246 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5247 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5248 without losing information).
5249
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005250- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005251 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5252 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5253 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5254 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5255 module).
5256
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005257 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005258 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5259 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5260 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5261 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005262
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005263- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005264 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5265 encoding.
5266
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005267- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5268 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5269
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005270- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005271 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5272
5273- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5274 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5275 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5276 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5277
5278- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5279
5280- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5281 ON, and OFF.
5282
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005283- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5284 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5285
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005286Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005287-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005288
5289- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5290 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5291 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005292
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005293- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5294 been added: -X and -E.
5295
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005296Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005297-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005298
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005299- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5300 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5301
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005302C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005303-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005304
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005305- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5306 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5307 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5308 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5309 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5310
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005311- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5312 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5313 as long) arguments.
5314
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005315- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5316 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5317 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5318 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5319 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5320 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5321
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005322- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5323 input.
5324
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005325New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005326-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005327
5328Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005329-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005330
5331Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005332-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005333
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005334- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5335 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5336 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5337
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005338- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5339 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5340 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005341 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005342
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005343 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5344 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5345 import signal
5346 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005347
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005348 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005349 while 1:
5350 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005351 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005352 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5353 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5354 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5355 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005356
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005357
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005358What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5359===========================
5360
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005361*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5362
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005363Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005364--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005365
5366- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5367 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5368 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5369
5370- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5371 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5372 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5373 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5374 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5375 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5376 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005377
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005378- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005379 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005380 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5381 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5382 associate a docstring with a property.
5383
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005384- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5385 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5386 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5387 other built-in object types.
5388
5389- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5390 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5391 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5392 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5393 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5394
5395- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5396 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5397
5398- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5399 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005400 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005401 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5402 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5403 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5404 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5405 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5406
5407- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5408 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5409 class.
5410
5411- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5412 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5413 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5414 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5415
5416- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5417 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5418 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5419 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5420
5421- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5422 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5423
5424- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5425 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5426 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5427 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5428 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005429 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005430 with the same value as s.
5431
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005432- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5433
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005434Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005435----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005436
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005437- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5438
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005439- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5440 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5441 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5442 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5443 objects.
5444
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005445- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5446 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005447 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5448 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5449
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005450- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5451 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5452 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5453
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005454Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005455-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005456
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005457- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5458 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5459 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5460 by the instances.
5461
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005462- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5463 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5464 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5465
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005466- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5467 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5468 before the entire comparison is complete.
5469
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005470- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5471 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5472 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5473
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005474- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5475 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5476 getwriter().
5477
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005478- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5479 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5480
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005481- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005482 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5483 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5484
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005485- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5486 iterable object.
5487
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005488- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5489 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005490
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005491- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5492 authentication.
5493
5494- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5495 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005496
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005497- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005498 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5499 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5500 a sample driver.)
5501
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005502Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005503-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005504
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005505- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5506 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5507 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5508 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5509 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5510 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5511 kernel has large file support.
5512
5513- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5514 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5515 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5516 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5517 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5518
5519- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5520 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5521 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5522
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005523C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005524-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005525
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005526- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5527 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5528
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005529New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005530-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005531
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005532- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5533 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5534
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005535Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005536-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005537
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005538- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5539 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5540 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5541 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5542 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5543
5544- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5545 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5546 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5547 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5548
5549- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5550 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5551
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005552Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005553-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005554
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005555- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005556 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5557 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005558
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005559
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005560What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5561===========================
5562
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005563*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5564
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005565Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005566----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005567
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005568- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5569 big to represent as a C double.
5570
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005571- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5572 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5573 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5574 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5575 restriction).
5576
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005577- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5578 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5579 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5580 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5581 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5582
5583 >>> dir([])
5584 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5585 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5586 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5587 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5588 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5589 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5590 'reverse', 'sort']
5591
5592 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5593
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005594- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005595 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5596 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5597 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5598 OverflowError exception.
5599
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005600- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005601 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005602 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5603 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5604 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5605 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5606 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005607 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005608 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5609 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5610
5611 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5612 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5613 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5614 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005615
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005616- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005617 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5618 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5619 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5620 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5621 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5622 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5623 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5624 once it is created.
5625
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005626- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5627 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5628 (key, value) pairs.
5629
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005630- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005631 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5632 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5633
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005634- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5635 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5636 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5637 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5638 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005639
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005640- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005641 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5642 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5643
5644 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5645
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005646- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005647 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5648
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005649Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005650-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005651
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005652- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005653 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5654 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005655
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005656- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5657 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5658 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5659 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5660 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5661 in this area anymore).
5662
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005663- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5664 threading.Timer.
5665
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005666- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5667 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5668
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005669- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005670 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5671
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005672- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005673 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5674 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5675 converted to Python longs.
5676
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005677- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005678 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5679
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005680- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5681 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5682 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5683
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005684Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005685-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005686
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005687- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5688 division operators as per PEP 238.
5689
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005690Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005691-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005692
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005693- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5694 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5695 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5696 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5697
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005698C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005699-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005700
5701- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005702
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005703- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5704 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005705 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005706
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005707 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5708 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005709 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005710 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005711
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005712- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005713 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5714 module:
5715
5716 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005717
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005718 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5719 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005720
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005721 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5722 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005723
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005724 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5725
5726 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5727
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005728- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005729 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5730 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5731 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005732
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005733New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005734-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005735
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005736- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5737 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5738 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5739 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5740 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005741
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005742Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005743-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005744
5745Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005746-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005747
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005748- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5749 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5750 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5751 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005752 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5753 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5754 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5755 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5756 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005757
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005758- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005759 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5760
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005761
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005762What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5763===========================
5764
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005765*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5766
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005767Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005768-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005769
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005770- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5771 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5772
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005773- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5774 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5775 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005776
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005777- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5778 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5779 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5780 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005781
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005782- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5783
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005784- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005785
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005786Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005787-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005788
5789- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005790 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005791 the module docstring for details.
5792
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005793Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005794-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005795
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005796- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005797 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5798 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5799 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005800
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005801- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5802 Nick Mathewson.
5803
5804Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005805----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005806
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005807- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5808 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5809 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5810 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5811 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5812 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5813 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5814 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5815
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005816- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5817 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5818 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5819 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5820
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005821- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5822 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5823 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5824 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5825 come a long way).
5826
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005827- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5828 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5829 write filters for these warnings).
5830
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005831- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5832 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5833 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5834 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5835 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5836
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005837- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5838 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5839 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5840 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5841 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5842 older distribution.
5843
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005844Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005845-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005846
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005847- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5848 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005849 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005850
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005851- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5852 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5853 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5854
5855- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5856
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005857- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5858
5859- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5860
5861- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5862
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005863- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005864
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005865- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5866
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005867New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005868-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005869
5870C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005871-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005872
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005873- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5874 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5875 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5876 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5877 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5878 against buffer overruns.
5879
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005880- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005881 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5882 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005883 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5884 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5885 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5886
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005887- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5888 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5889 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5890 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5891 deprecated.
5892
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005893Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005894-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005895
5896- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5897 relevant is found.
5898
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005899
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005900What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005901===========================
5902
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005903*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5904
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005905Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005906----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005907
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005908- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5909 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5910 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5911 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5912 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5913 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5914 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5915 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005916 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005917 repaired.
5918
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005919- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005920 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005921 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5922 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5923 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5924 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5925 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5926 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5927 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5928 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5929
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005930- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5931 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5932 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5933 leading BMO character).
5934
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005935- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5936 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5937 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5938
5939 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5940 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5941 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005942
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005943 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5944 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5945 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5946 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5947 for various simple to use conversions.
5948
5949 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5950 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5951
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005952 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5953 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5954 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5955 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5956 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5957 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5958 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5959 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5960 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5961 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5962 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5963 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5964 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5965 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5966 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005967
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005968- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5969 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5970 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005971 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005972 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005973
5974 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005975 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5976 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5977 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5978 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5979 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005980 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5981 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005982
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005983 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5984 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5985 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005986 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005987
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005988- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5989 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5990 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5991 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5992 floating arithmetic,
5993
5994 x = 9007199254740992.0
5995 print long(x)
5996
5997 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5998 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5999 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
6000 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
6001 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
6002 functions are of good quality).
6003
6004 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
6005 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
6006 algorithms to break.
6007
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00006008- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
6009 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
6010 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
6011 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
6012 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
6013 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
6014 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
6015 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
6016 order.
6017
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006018- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
6019 operation along the most common code paths.
6020
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006021- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
6022 the same as dict.has_key(x).
6023
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00006024- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
6025 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
6026 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
6027 {}.update(UserDict())
6028
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006029- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
6030 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
6031 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
6032 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
6033 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
6034 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
6035 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
6036 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
6037
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006038- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00006039 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006040
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006041 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00006042 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
6043 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00006044 join() method of strings
6045 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006046 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
6047 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006048 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00006049 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006050
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00006051- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
6052 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
6053
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006054- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
6055 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
6056
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00006057- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
6058 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
6059 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
6060 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
6061
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006062- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
6063 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006064 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006065 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
6066 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00006067
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00006068- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
6069
6070
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006071Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006072-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006073
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006074- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006075 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006076 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
6077 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
6078
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00006079- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
6080 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
6081
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00006082- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
6083 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
6084 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
6085 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
6086
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00006087- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
6088 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
6089 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
6090
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006091- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6092
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006093- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6094
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006095- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6096 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6097 that are still imported into string.py).
6098
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006099- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6100
6101- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6102 Now it does.
6103
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006104- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6105
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006106- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6107 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6108 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6109 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6110 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006111 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6112 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006113
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006114- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6115 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6116 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6117 'help(object)'.
6118
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006119Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006120-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006121
6122- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006123 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006124 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6125 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6126
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006127- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006128 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6129 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006130
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006131C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006132-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006133
6134- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6135 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006136
6137----
6138
6139**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**