blob: 707429b7dd702f5a1b637e0850f737c143963815 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
10Core and builtins
11-----------------
12
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000013- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
14 list.sort().
15
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000016
17Extension Modules
18-----------------
19
20
21Library
22-------
23
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +000024- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
25
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +000026- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
27
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +000028- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
29 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
30 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
31
Raymond Hettinger784ab762004-12-04 10:50:51 +000032- the deprecated whrandom module was removed. Use the random module instead.
33
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000034- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000035 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000036
37
38Build
39-----
40
41
42C API
43-----
44
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +000045- Removed PyRange_New().
46
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000047
48Tests
49-----
50
51
52Mac
53---
54
55
56
57Tools/Demos
58-----------
59
60
61
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +000062What's New in Python 2.4 final?
63===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +000064
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +000065*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +000066
67Core and builtins
68-----------------
69
70- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
71 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
72 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
73
74
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +000075What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
76==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000077
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +000078*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000079
80Core and builtins
81-----------------
82
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +000083- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
84 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
85 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
86
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000087
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +000088Library
89-------
90
91- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
92 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
93 raised is re-raised.
94
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +000095- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
96 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
97
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +000098- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
99 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
100 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
101 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
102 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
103 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
104 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
105 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
106 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
107 by the slice are recomputed now.
108
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000109- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000110
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000111Build
112-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000113
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000114- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
115 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
116 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000117
118C API
119-----
120
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000121- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
122
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000123
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000124What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
125================================
126
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000127*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000128
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000129License
130-------
131
132The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
133is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
134changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
135Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
136intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
137durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
138the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
139License::
140
141 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
142
143says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
144to Python 2.1.1.
145
146The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
147License Version 2.
148
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000149Core and builtins
150-----------------
151
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000152- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
153 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
154 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
155 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
156 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
157 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
158 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
159 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
160 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
161 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
162
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000163- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000164
165Extension Modules
166-----------------
167
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000168- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
169 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
170 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
171 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000172
173Library
174-------
175
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000176- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
177 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
178 returned.
179
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000180- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
181
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000182- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
183 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
184
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000185- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
186
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000187- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
188 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000189
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000190- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
191
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000192- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
193
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000194- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000195 the source code is updated and reloaded.
196
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000197Build
198-----
199
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000200- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000201
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000202What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
203================================
204
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000205*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000206
207Core and builtins
208-----------------
209
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000210- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000211 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
212
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000213- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
214 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
215 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
216 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
217
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000218- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
219 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
220
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000221- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
222 constant.
223
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000224- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
225 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
226 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
227 large), and to anomalies such as
228 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
229 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
230 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
231 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000232
233Extension modules
234-----------------
235
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000236- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
237 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000238 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
239 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
240 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000241
242Library
243-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000244
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000245- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000246 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000247 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
248 --swig-cpp.
249
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000250- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
251 it is set.
252
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000253- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000254
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000255- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
256 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
257 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
258 Closes bug #1039270.
259
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000260- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000261
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000262 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000263 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
264 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
265 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
266 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
267 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
268 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
269 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
270 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
271 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
272 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
273 + Updates to documentation.
274
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000275- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
276 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
277 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
278 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
279
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000280- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000281
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000282- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
283 applications should use the getmember function.
284
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000285- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
286
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000287- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
288 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
289 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
290 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
291 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
292 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
293 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
294 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
295 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
296
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000297- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
298 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000299 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000300
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000301- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
302 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
303 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
304 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
305 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
306 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
307 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
308 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000309
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000310- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
311 the new public features (of which there are many).
312
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000313- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000314 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
315 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
316 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
317 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000318 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000319
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000320- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
321
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000322- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
323 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
324 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
325 options.
326
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000327- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
328 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
329 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
330 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
331 conditions under which non-string values work.
332
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000333Build
334-----
335
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000336- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
337 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
338 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
339
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000340- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
341 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
342 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
343 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
344 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000345
346C API
347-----
348
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000349- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
350 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
351
352- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
353
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000354- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
355 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
356 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
357 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
358 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
359 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
360 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
361 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
362 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
363
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000364- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
365
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000366- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
367 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
368 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000369
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000370Tests
371-----
372
373- test__locale ported to unittest
374
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000375Mac
376---
377
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000378- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
379 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
380 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000381
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000382Tools/Demos
383-----------
384
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000385- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
386 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
387 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
388 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
389 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000390
391
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000392What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
393=================================
394
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000395*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000396
397Core and builtins
398-----------------
399
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000400- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000401 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
402
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000403- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
404 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
405 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
406 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
407 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
408 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
409 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
410 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000411 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
412 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
413 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
414 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
415 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000416
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000417- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
418 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
419 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
420 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
421 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
422
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000423- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
424
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000425- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
426 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
427
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000428- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
429 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
430 modified the list.
431
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000432- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
433 functions is now writable.
434
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000435- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
436 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
437 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
438 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
439
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000440- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
441 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
442 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
443 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
444 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000445
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000446- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
447 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
448
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000449Extension modules
450-----------------
451
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000452- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
453
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000454- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
455 data.
456
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000457- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
458 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
459 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
460 supposed to have been truncated away.
461
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000462- Added socket.socketpair().
463
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000464- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
465 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
466
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000467- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000468 versions of Python, have now been removed.
469
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000470Library
471-------
472
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000473- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000474 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000475
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000476- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
477 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
478
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000479- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
480 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
481
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000482- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
483
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000484- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
485 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000486
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000487- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
488 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
489
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000490- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
491
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000492- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
493
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000494- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
495
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000496- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
497 Percivall.
498
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000499- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
500 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
501
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000502- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
503 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
504 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000505 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000506
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000507- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
508 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
509 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
510 and exponent.
511
512- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
513
514- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
515 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
516 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
517
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000518- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
519 to the readline module.
520
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000521- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000522 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
523 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000524
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000525- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
526 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
527 contains symlinks.
528
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000529- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
530 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
531
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000532- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
533 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
534 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
535
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000536- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
537 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
538 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
539 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
540 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
541 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
542 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
543 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
544 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
545 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
546 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
547 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
548 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
549
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000550- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
551
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000552Tools/Demos
553-----------
554
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000555- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
556 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
557
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000558- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
559
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000560Build
561-----
562
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000563- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
564 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
565 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
566 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
567 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
568 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
569 plans to do so.
570
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000571- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
572 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
573
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000574- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
575 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
576
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000577- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
578 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
579
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000580- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
581 GNU/k*BSD systems.
582
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000583- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
584 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
585
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000586C API
587-----
588
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000589..
590
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000591Documentation
592-------------
593
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000594- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
595 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
596
597- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
598 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
599 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000600
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000601New platforms
602-------------
603
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000604- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
605
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000606Tests
607-----
608
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000609..
610
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000611Windows
612-------
613
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000614- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
615 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
616 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
617 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
618 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
619 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
620 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
621 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
622 the problem.
623
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000624Mac
625---
626
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000627..
628
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000629
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000630What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
631=================================
632
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000633*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000634
635Core and builtins
636-----------------
637
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000638- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
639 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
640 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
641 sensitive code.
642
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000643- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000644 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000645
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000646 @staticmethod
647 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000648
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000649 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000650
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000651- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
652 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
653 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
654 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
655 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
656 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
657 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
658 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
659 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
660 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
661 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
662
663 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
664 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
665 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
666 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
667 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
668 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
669 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
670
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000671- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
672 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
673
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000674- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000675 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000676
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000677- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000678 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000679 which was missing for no apparent reason.
680
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000681- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000682 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
683 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
684
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000685- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
686 types that support garbage collection.
687
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000688- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
689
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000690- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
691 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
692 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
693 Jython.
694
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000695- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
696
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000697- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
698 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
699
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000700- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
701 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
702 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000703
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000704- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
705 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
706 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
707
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000708Extension modules
709-----------------
710
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000711- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
712
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000713Library
714-------
715
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000716- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
717 TIS-620
718
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000719- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
720 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
721 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
722 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
723 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
724 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
725 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
726 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
727 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
728 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
729
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000730- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
731
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000732- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
733 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
734 same as when the argument is omitted).
735 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
736
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000737- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
738
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000739- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
740 schemes are offered.
741
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000742- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
743
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000744- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
745 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
746 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
747
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000748- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
749
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000750- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
751 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
752
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000753- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
754 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
755 when dummy_threading is being used.
756
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000757- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
758 from a tarfile.
759
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000760- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000761 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000762
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000763- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
764 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
765 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
766 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
767
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000768- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
769 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
770
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000771- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
772 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
773 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
774 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
775 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
776 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
777 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
778 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
779 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
780 by some other method in progress).
781
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000782- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
783 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
784 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000785
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000786- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
787
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000788- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
789 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
790 AM Kuchling.
791
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000792- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
793 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
794 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
795
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000796- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
797 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
798 instead of unsigned.
799
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000800- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000801 no longer part of the public API.
802
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000803- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
804 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
805 string methods of the same name).
806
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000807- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000808 SF patch 945642.
809
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000810- doctest unittest integration improvements:
811
812 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
813
814 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
815 DocTestSuites.
816
817- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
818 that provide thread-local data.
819
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000820- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
821 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
822
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000823- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
824
825- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
826 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
827 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
828
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000829- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
830
831 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
832 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
833 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000834
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000835 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
836 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
837 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
838 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
839
840 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
841 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
842
843 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
844 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
845 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
846 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
847
848 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
849 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
850 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
851 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
852 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
853
854 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
855 wrapping help output.
856
857 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
858 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
859 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000860
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000861C API
862-----
863
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000864- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
865 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
866 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
867 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
868 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
869 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
870 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
871 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
872 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
873 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
874 its visible semantics have not changed.
875
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000876- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
877 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
878
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000879Documentation
880-------------
881
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000882- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000883
884 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000885 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000886
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000887 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000888
889 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
890
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000891- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000892
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000893Tests
894-----
895
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000896- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +0000897 platforms that use the Makefile.
898
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000899- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
900 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
901 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
902
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000903
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000904What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
905=================================
906
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +0000907*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000908
909Core and builtins
910-----------------
911
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +0000912- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
913 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
914 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
915 objects now (one object instead of three).
916
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +0000917- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
918 Windows DLLs.
919
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +0000920- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
921 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +0000922
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +0000923- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
924 a new .pyc magic.
925
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +0000926- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
927 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
928 be there.
929
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +0000930- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
931 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
932 the LC_NUMERIC category.
933
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +0000934- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
935 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
936 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
937
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +0000938- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
939
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +0000940- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
941 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
942 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +0000943
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +0000944- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
945 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
946
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +0000947- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
948
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000949- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000950 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000951
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +0000952- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
953
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +0000954- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
955
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +0000956- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
957 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
958
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +0000959- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
960 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
961 Fixes bug #858016 .
962
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +0000963- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
964 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
965 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
966
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +0000967- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
968 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
969 improves their performance (about 35%).
970
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +0000971- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
972 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
973 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
974
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +0000975- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
976 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
977 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
978 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
979
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000980- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
981 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
982 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
983 length is not known).
984
985- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
986 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +0000987 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
988 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000989 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
990
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +0000991- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
992 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
993
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +0000994- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
995 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
996 keyword arguments.
997
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +0000998- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
999 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1000 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1001
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001002- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1003 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1004 cases.
1005
1006- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1007 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1008 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1009 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1010 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1011 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1012 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1013 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1014 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1015 a release build.
1016
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001017- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1018 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1019
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001020- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001021 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001022
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001023- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1024 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1025 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1026 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1027 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1028 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1029 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1030 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1031 destroyed.
1032
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001033- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1034 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1035 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1036 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1037 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1038 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1039 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1040 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1041
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001042- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1043 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1044 character other than a space.
1045
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001046- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1047 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1048 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1049 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1050 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1051 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1052 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1053 attributes with the same name.
1054
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001055- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1056 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1057 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1058 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1059 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1060 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1061 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1062 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1063 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1064 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1065 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1066 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1067 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1068 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001069
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001070- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1071 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1072 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1073 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1074 This has been repaired.
1075
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001076- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1077
1078- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1079
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001080- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1081 over a sequence.
1082
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001083- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001084 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001085
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001086- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1087
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001088- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1089 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1090 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1091 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1092 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1093 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1094 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1095 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1096
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001097- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1098 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1099 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1100
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001101- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1102 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1103 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1104 freelist.
1105
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001106- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1107 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1108
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001109- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1110 number.
1111
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001112- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1113 a TypeError exception.
1114
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001115- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1116 820195.
1117
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001118- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1119 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1120 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1121
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001122- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001123 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1124 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001125
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001126- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1127 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1128 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1129
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001130- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1131 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001132 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001133
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001134- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001135 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1136 the first call.
1137
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001138
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001139Extension modules
1140-----------------
1141
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001142- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1143 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1144
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001145- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1146 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1147 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1148 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1149 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1150 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1151 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001152
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001153- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1154
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001155- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1156
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001157- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1158 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1159
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001160- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1161 fewer false positives.
1162
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001163- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1164 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1165
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001166- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001167 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1168
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001169- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001170 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001171 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001172 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1173 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001174
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001175- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1176 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1177 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1178 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1179
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001180- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1181 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1182 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1183 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1184 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1185 #897625.
1186
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001187- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1188 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1189
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001190- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1191 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1192 and pops on either side of the deque.
1193
1194- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1195 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1196
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001197- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1198 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1199 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1200 other functions that expect a function argument.
1201
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001202- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1203
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001204- os.getsid was added.
1205
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001206- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1207 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1208 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1209
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001210- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1211
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001212- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1213
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001214- readline.clear_history was added.
1215
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001216- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1217
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001218- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1219
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001220- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1221
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001222- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1223
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001224- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1225
1226- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1227
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001228- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1229
1230- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1231
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001232- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1233 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1234 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1235
1236- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1237 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1238 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1239 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1240 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1241 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1242 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1243
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001244- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1245 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1246 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1247 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001248
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001249- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001250 iterators from a single iterable.
1251
1252- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1253 of raising a TypeError exception.
1254
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001255- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1256 as parameter.
1257
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001258Library
1259-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001260
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001261- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1262 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1263 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001264
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001265- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1266 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1267 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001268
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001269- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001270
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001271- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1272 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001273
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001274- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1275 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1276
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001277- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1278
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001279- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001280 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001281
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001282- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001283 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001284
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001285- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1286
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001287- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1288 on cygwin and mingw32.
1289
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001290- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1291
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001292- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1293 module.
1294
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001295- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1296 installation scheme for all platforms.
1297
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001298- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001299 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001300
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001301- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1302 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1303 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1304
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001305- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1306 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1307 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1308
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001309- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1310
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001311- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1312
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001313- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1314 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1315
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001316- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1317 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1318 type pattern with the same value exists.
1319
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001320- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1321 when run from the command prompt).
1322
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001323- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1324 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1325
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001326- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1327 default sort).
1328
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001329- Added global runctx function to profile module
1330
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001331- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1332
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001333- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1334
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001335- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1336
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001337- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001338 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1339 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1340 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1341 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1342 accordingly.
1343
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001344- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1345 decoding standards.
1346
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001347- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1348 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1349 called for all requests.
1350
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001351- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1352 they are passed to the compiler.
1353
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001354- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1355 indent, width and depth.
1356
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001357- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1358 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1359
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001360- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1361 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1362
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001363- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1364
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001365- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1366
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001367- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1368
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001369- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1370 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1371
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001372- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001373 for better performance.
1374
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001375- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001376
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001377- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1378 a string).
1379
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001380- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1381
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001382- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1383
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001384- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1385
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001386- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1387
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001388- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1389 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1390 list of fieldnames.
1391
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001392- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1393 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1394
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001395- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1396
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001397- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1398 empty lists.
1399
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001400- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1401 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1402 and shelves.
1403
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001404- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1405 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1406
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001407- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001408 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1409 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001410
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001411- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1412 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001413 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001414
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001415- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001416 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1417 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1418
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001419- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1420 and removed in Py2.4.
1421
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001422- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1423
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001424- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1425
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001426Tools/Demos
1427-----------
1428
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001429- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1430 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1431
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001432- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1433
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001434- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1435 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1436 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1437 destination in situations where both files are given.
1438
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001439- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1440 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1441 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1442 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1443
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001444- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1445
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001446- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1447 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1448 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1449 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1450 now.
1451
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001452- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1453 in effect
1454
1455- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1456 C-c C-h
1457
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001458- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1459 -d option was given.
1460
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001461Build
1462-----
1463
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001464- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1465 build under OS X.
1466
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001467- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1468 --enable-profiling.
1469
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001470- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1471 is configured --with-tsc.
1472
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001473- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1474 on AMD64.
1475
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001476- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1477 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1478
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001479- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1480 removed.
1481
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001482- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1483 supported (see PEP 11).
1484
1485- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1486
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001487- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1488
1489- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1490 (see PEP 11).
1491
1492- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1493 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1494
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001495C API
1496-----
1497
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001498- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1499 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1500 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1501
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001502- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1503 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1504 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1505 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1506
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001507- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1508 generator objects.
1509
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001510- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1511 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001512 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1513 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001514
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001515- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1516 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1517
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001518- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1519 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1520 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1521 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1522 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1523
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001524- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1525 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1526 about 10% faster.
1527
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001528- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1529 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1530
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001531- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1532 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1533 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1534 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1535
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001536Windows
1537-------
1538
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001539- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1540 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1541 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1542 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1543
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001544- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1545 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1546 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1547
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001548
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001549What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1550===============================
1551
1552*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1553
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001554IDLE
1555----
1556
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001557- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1558 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1559 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1560 context-menu actions.
1561
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001562- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1563 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1564 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1565 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1566 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1567 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1568 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1569 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1570 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1571
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001572
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001573What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1574=============================================
1575
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001576*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001577
1578Core and builtins
1579-----------------
1580
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001581- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001582 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001583 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1584
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001585Extension modules
1586-----------------
1587
1588- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1589 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1590 than once. This has been fixed.
1591
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001592- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1593 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1594 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1595 call.
1596
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001597- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1598
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001599Library
1600-------
1601
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001602- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1603 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1604
1605- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1606 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1607 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1608 restored.
1609
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001610IDLE
1611----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001612
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001613- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001614
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001615Build
1616-----
1617
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001618- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1619 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1620
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001621C API
1622-----
1623
1624Windows
1625-------
1626
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001627- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1628 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1629
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001630- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1631
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001632Mac
1633---
1634
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001635- Various fixes to pimp.
1636
1637- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1638
1639- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1640 more problems than it solves.
1641
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001642
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001643What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1644=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001645
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001646*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1647
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001648Core and builtins
1649-----------------
1650
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001651- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1652 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1653
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001654- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1655 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001656 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001657
1658- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1659 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1660 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001661 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001662
1663- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1664 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001665
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001666- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1667 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1668 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1669
1670- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001671 770247.
1672
1673- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001674
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001675Extension modules
1676-----------------
1677
1678- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1679 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1680
1681- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1682
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001683- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1684
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001685- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1686 contained within the _strptime module.
1687
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001688- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1689 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1690
1691- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001692 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1693
1694- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1695 the find_class attribute, if present.
1696
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001697- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001698
1699 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1700 (SF bug 763298).
1701
1702 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001703 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1704 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1705 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001706
1707 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1708
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001709Library
1710-------
1711
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001712- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1713
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001714- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1715 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1716 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1717 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1718 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1719 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1720 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1721 or Tester().
1722
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001723- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1724 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1725 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1726 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1727 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1728 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1729 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1730 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1731 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001732
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001733 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001734
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001735- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1736 weren't before was an oversight.
1737
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001738- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1739 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1740
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001741- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1742 when there are no lines.
1743
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001744- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1745 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1746
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001747- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1748 to child processes.
1749
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001750- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1751
1752- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1753
1754- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1755 xmlrpclib.
1756
1757- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1758 responses.
1759
1760- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1761 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1762
1763- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1764 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1765 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1766
1767- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1768 used as patterns.
1769
1770- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1771 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1772 than Tk 8.3.
1773
1774- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1775
1776- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001777
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001778Tools/Demos
1779-----------
1780
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001781- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1782
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001783- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1784
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001785- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001786
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001787Build
1788-----
1789
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001790- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1791
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001792- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1793
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001794- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1795 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001796
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001797- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1798 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1799 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001800
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001801C API
1802-----
1803
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001804- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1805 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1806
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001807Windows
1808-------
1809
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001810- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1811 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1812 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1813 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1814 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1815 Python exception ::
1816
1817 thread.error: can't start new thread
1818
1819 is raised now.
1820
1821- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1822 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1823 instead of from DLL teardown.
1824
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001825Mac
1826---
1827
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001828- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001829 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001830 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1831 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1832 the executable in the bundle.
1833
1834- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001835
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001836- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1837
1838- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1839 on Panther.
1840
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001841What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1842================================
1843
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001844*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001845
1846Core and builtins
1847-----------------
1848
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001849- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1850 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1851 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1852 with the -i option.
1853
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001854- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1855 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1856
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001857- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1858 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1859
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001860- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1861 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1862 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1863 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1864 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1865 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1866 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1867 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1868 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1869 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1870 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1871 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1872 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001873
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001874- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1875 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1876 embedded in a lambda expression.
1877
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001878- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1879 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1880 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1881 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1882 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1883
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001884- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1885 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1886 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1887
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001888- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1889 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1890
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001891- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1892 It's writable again.
1893
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001894- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1895 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1896 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001897 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001898
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001899- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1900 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
1901 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
1902
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001903Extension modules
1904-----------------
1905
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00001906- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
1907 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
1908
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001909- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
1910 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
1911 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
1912 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
1913
1914- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
1915 collection.
1916
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00001917- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
1918 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
1919 unique within a single program run.
1920
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001921- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1922 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1923
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001924- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1925 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1926
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001927- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1928 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001929
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001930- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1931
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001932- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1933 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1934
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001935- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1936 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1937 for many BSD-derived systems.
1938
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001939
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001940Library
1941-------
1942
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001943- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1944 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1945 primary ones:
1946
1947 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1948 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1949 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1950
1951 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1952 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1953 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1954 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1955 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1956 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1957
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001958- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1959 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1960 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1961 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1962 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1963 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1964 argument.
1965
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001966- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1967 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1968 in the archive.
1969
1970- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1971 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1972
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001973- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1974 569574).
1975
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001976- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1977 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1978 no more.
1979
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001980- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1981 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1982 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1983 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1984 code coverage.
1985
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001986- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1987 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
1988 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001989 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
1990 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001991
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001992- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1993 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1994 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001995 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001996
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001997- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1998
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001999- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2000 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2001 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2002 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2003
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002004- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2005 handling.
2006
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002007- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2008 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2009
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002010- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2011 in socket.py.
2012
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002013- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2014
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002015- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2016 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2017 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2018 opener with proxy support.
2019
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002020- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2021
2022- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2023
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002024Tools/Demos
2025-----------
2026
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002027- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2028
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002029- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2030
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002031- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2032 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002033
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002034- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2035 files.
2036
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002037Build
2038-----
2039
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002040- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002041 different root directory.
2042
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002043C API
2044-----
2045
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002046- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2047 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2048 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2049 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2050 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2051 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2052 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2053 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2054 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2055 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2056
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002057- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2058 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2059 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2060 from Python.
2061
2062
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002063New platforms
2064-------------
2065
2066None this time.
2067
2068Tests
2069-----
2070
2071- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2072 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2073
2074Windows
2075-------
2076
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002077- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2078
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002079- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2080 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2081 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2082 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2083 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2084 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2085 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2086 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2087 that's what it's for.
2088
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002089Mac
2090---
2091
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002092- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2093 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2094 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2095 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002096- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2097 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2098- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002099
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002100SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2101------------------------------------
2102
2103430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2104598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2105622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2106661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2107683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2108697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2109713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2110724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2111727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2112729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2113730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2114731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2115732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2116733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2117735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2118740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2119744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2120745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2121747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2122749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2123751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2124753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2125755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2126757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2127760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2128
2129
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002130What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2131================================
2132
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002133*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002134
2135Core and builtins
2136-----------------
2137
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002138- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2139 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2140
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002141- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2142 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2143 and cannot be strings).
2144
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002145- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2146 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2147 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2148 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2149
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002150- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2151 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2152 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2153 Python itself.
2154
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002155- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2156 the referenced object, if it has one.
2157
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002158- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2159 the thread started at
2160 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2161
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002162- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2163 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2164 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2165 placed on a list index.
2166
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002167- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2168 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2169 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2170 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2171
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002172- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2173 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2174 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2175 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2176 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2177 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2178 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2179
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002180- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2181 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2182 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2183 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2184 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2185
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002186- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2187 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002188
2189- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2190 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2191 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2192 #693195.)
2193
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002194- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2195 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002196
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002197- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002198 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002199 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2200 interpreter executions, would fail.
2201
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002202- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002203 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002204 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002205
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002206Extension modules
2207-----------------
2208
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002209- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2210 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2211 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2212 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2213
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002214- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2215 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2216
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002217- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2218 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2219 and Greg Chapman.)
2220
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002221- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2222 recursively.
2223
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002224- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002225 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2226 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2227 leaks.
2228
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002229- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2230
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002231- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2232 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2233 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2234 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2235 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2236 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2237 #705836.
2238
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002239- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002240 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2241
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002242- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2243 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2244 See SF bug #692416.
2245
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002246- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2247 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2248
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002249- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2250 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2251 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002252
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002253- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002254 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2255 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2256
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002257- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2258 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2259 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2260 timeouts to work properly.
2261
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002262Library
2263-------
2264
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002265- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2266 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2267 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2268 future release.
2269
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002270- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2271 for querying platform dependent features.
2272
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002273- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002274
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002275- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2276 pickle protocol versions.
2277
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002278- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2279 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2280 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2281
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002282- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2283
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002284- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2285 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2286 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2287 modules.
2288
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002289- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2290 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2291 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2292
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002293- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2294 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2295
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002296- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2297 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2298 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2299
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002300- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002301 MS Office extensions.
2302
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002303- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2304 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2305
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002306- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2307 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2308
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002309- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2310 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2311 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2312 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2313 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2314 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2315
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002316- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2317 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2318 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002319
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002320- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2321 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2322 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2323
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002324- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2325
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002326- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2327 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2328 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2329
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002330Tools/Demos
2331-----------
2332
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002333- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2334 See the module docstring for details.
2335
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002336Build
2337-----
2338
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002339- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2340 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002341
2342C API
2343-----
2344
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002345- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2346
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002347- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2348 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2349 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2350
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002351- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2352 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002353
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002354 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2355 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2356 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002357
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002358- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002359 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2360
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002361- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2362 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2363 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002364
2365New platforms
2366-------------
2367
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002368None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002369
2370Tests
2371-----
2372
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002373- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2374 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002375
2376Windows
2377-------
2378
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002379- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2380 function.
2381
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002382- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2383 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002384
2385Mac
2386---
2387
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002388- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2389 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002390
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002391- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2392 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002393
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002394- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2395 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2396 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002397
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002398- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002399 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2400 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002401
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002402- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2403 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002404
2405
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002406What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2407=================================
2408
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002409*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002410
2411Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002412-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002413
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002414- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2415 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2416 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2417
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002418- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2419 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2420 (SF patch #664376.)
2421
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002422- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2423 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2424 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2425 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2426 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2427 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002428 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002429
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002430- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2431 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2432 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2433 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002434 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002435
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002436- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2437 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2438 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2439 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2440 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2441 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2442 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2443 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2444 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2445 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2446 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2447
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002448- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2449 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2450 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2451 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2452 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2453 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2454
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002455- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2456 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2457
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002458- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2459 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2460 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2461 case.)
2462
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002463- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2464 passed as unicode strings.
2465
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002466- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2467 See SF bug #683467.
2468
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002469- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2470 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2471
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002472- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2473
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002474- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2475
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002476- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2477 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2478 arguments.
2479
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002480- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2481 See SF bug #667147.
2482
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002483- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002484 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002485 See SF bug #676155.
2486
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002487- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002488 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002489 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2490 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2491 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2492 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2493 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2494 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002495
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002496Extension modules
2497-----------------
2498
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002499- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2500 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2501 tp_as_number pointer.
2502
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002503- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2504 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2505 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2506 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2507 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2508
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002509- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2510
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002511- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2512
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002513- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002514 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002515 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2516 patch #678531.)
2517
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002518- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2519 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2520
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002521- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2522 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2523
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002524- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2525
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002526- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2527 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2528 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2529
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002530- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2531
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002532- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2533 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2534
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002535- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002536
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002537- datetime changes:
2538
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002539 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2540
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002541 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2542 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2543 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2544 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2545 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2546 now.
2547
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002548 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002549 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2550 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002551
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002552 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002553 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002554 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2555 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2556 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2557 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002558
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002559 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2560 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2561 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002562 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2563
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002564 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2565 by a later example coded by Guido.
2566
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002567 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002568 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2569 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2570 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002571 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2572 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2573
2574 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2575 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2576 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2577 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2578 tzinfo subclass instance.
2579
2580 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2581 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2582 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2583 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2584 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2585 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2586 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2587 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002588
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002589 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2590 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2591 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2592 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2593 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002594 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2595
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002596 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002597
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002598 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2599 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2600 as a naive datetime object.
2601
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002602 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2603 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2604 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2605
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002606 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2607 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2608 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2609 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2610 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2611 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2612 comparison.
2613
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002614 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2615 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2616 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2617 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002618 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002619
2620 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002621
2622 and ::
2623
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002624 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2625
2626 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2627 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2628 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2629 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2630
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002631 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2632 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2633 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2634 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2635 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2636
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002637 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2638 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002639 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2640 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002641
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002642Library
2643-------
2644
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002645- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2646 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2647
2648- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2649 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2650 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2651 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2652 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2653 See PEP 307 for details.
2654
2655- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2656 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2657
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002658- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2659 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002660 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002661 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2662 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002663 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002664
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002665- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2666 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2667
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002668- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2669 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2670 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2671
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002672- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2673
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002674- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2675 exception.
2676
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002677- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2678 class.
2679
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002680- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2681 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2682 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2683
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002684- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2685 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2686
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002687- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002688 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2689 See SF bug #659228.
2690
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002691- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2692 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2693 See SF patch #651082.
2694
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002695- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002696
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002697- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2698 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2699
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002700- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002701 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002702
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002703- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2704 DOS paths from other platforms.
2705
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002706Tools/Demos
2707-----------
2708
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002709- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2710 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2711 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2712 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2713 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2714 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2715 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2716 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2717 example:
2718
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002719 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2720 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002721
2722 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2723
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002724
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002725Build
2726-----
2727
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002728- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2729 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2730 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002731 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2732
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002733 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2734
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002735- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2736 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2737 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2738 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2739 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2740 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2741 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2742 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2743 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2744
2745- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2746 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2747 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2748 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2749
2750- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2751 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2752
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002753C API
2754-----
2755
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002756- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2757 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002758
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002759- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2760 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2761 tp_as_number pointer.
2762
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002763- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2764 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2765 (SF #681367)
2766
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002767- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2768 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2769 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2770 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002771
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002772Tests
2773-----
2774
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002775- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002776 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2777 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2778 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2779 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2780 pydoc.)
2781
2782- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2783
2784- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002785
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002786Windows
2787-------
2788
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002789- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2790 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2791 time).
2792
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002793- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2794 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2795
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002796- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2797 release without strong cryptography.
2798
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002799- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002800 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002801
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002802- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2803 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2804
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002805Mac
2806---
2807
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002808- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2809 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002810
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002811- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2812 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2813 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002814
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002815- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2816 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002817
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002818- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2819 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2820 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2821 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002822
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002823- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002824 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2825 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2826 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002827
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002828
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002829What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002830=================================
2831
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002832*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002833
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002834Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002835--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002836
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002837- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2838
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002839- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2840 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002841 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002842 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002843 a different meaning than before.
2844
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002845- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002846 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002847 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002848
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002849- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002850 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002851 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002852
2853- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2854 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2855 and deallocation.
2856
2857- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2858 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2859
2860- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2861 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2862 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2863 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2864 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2865
2866- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2867 now detected by the garbage collector.
2868
2869- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2870 [SF bug 519621]
2871
2872- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2873 identifier.
2874
2875- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2876 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2877 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2878 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2879 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2880 [SF bug 563060]
2881
2882- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2883 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2884 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2885 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2886 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2887
2888- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2889 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2890 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2891
2892- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2893
2894- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2895 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2896 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2897 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2898 state of the slots would be lost.)
2899
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002900Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002901-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002902
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002903- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002904 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
2905 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
2906 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
2907 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002908 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
2909 Jython 2.1.
2910
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002911- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002912 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002913 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
2914 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
2915 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
2916 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
2917 these, see PEP 302.
2918
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002919- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
2920 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2921 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2922
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002923- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2924 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2925 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2926
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002927- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2928 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2929 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2930
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002931- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2932 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2933 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2934 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2935 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2936 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2937 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2938 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2939 releases or implementations.
2940
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002941- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002942 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2943 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002944
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002945- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2946 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2947
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002948- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2949 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2950 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2951
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002952- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2953 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2954
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002955- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2956 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002957 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2958 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002959
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002960- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2961 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2962 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2963 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2964 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2965
2966 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2967 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2968 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2969 pattern.
2970
2971 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2972 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2973 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2974 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2975
2976 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2977 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2978 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2979 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2980 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2981 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2982
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002983- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2984 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2985 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2986 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2987 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
2988 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
2989 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
2990 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002991
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002992- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2993 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2994 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2995 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2996 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002997 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2998 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2999 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3000 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3001 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3002 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3003 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003004
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003005- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3006 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3007
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003008- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3009 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3010 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3011 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3012 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3013 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3014 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3015 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3016 to Zack Weinberg!
3017
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003018- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3019 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3020 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3021 type. This has been fixed now.
3022
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003023- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3024 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3025 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3026
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003027- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3028 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3029 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3030 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3031 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3032 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3033 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3034 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003035 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003036
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003037- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3038 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3039 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003040
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003041- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3042 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3043 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3044 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3045 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3046 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3047 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3048 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003049 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003050 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3051 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3052
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003053- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3054 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3055 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3056 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3057 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3058 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3059 this.)
3060
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003061- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3062 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003063 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003064 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003065 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3066 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003067 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3068 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003069
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003070- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3071 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3072 currently running.
3073
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003074- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3075 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3076 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3077 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3078
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003079- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3080 as directory names.
3081
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003082- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3083 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3084
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003085- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3086 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3087
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003088- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003089 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3090 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003091
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003092- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3093 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3094 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3095 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3096 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3097
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003098- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3099 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3100 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3101 removed.
3102
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003103- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3104 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3105 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3106
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003107- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3108 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3109 to __debug__.
3110
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003111- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3112 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3113 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3114
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003115- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3116 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3117 deprecated now.
3118
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003119- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3120 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3121 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003122
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003123- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3124 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3125 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3126 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3127 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003128
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003129- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3130 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3131
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003132- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3133 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3134 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003135 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003136 is backward compatible.
3137
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003138- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3139 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3140 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3141 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3142 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3143
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003144- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3145 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3146 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3147 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3148 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3149 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003150
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003151- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3152 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3153
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003154- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3155 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3156
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003157- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3158 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3159 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3160 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3161 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3162
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003163- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3164 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3165 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3166
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003167- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003168 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3169
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003170- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3171 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3172 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003173
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003174- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3175 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3176
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003177- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3178 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3179 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3180
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003181- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3182
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003183Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003184-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003185
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003186- Added three operators to the operator module:
3187 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3188 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3189 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3190
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003191- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3192
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003193- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3194 archives.
3195
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003196- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3197 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3198 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3199
3200 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3201
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003202- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3203 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3204 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003205 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003206
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003207- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3208 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3209 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3210 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003211 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3212 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3213 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3214 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003215
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003216- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3217 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003218
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003219- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3220
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003221- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3222 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3223
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003224- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3225 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3226 supported.
3227
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003228- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3229
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003230- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3231 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003232
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003233- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3234 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3235
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003236- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3237
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003238- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3239 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3240
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003241- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3242 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3243 functions but callable type objects.
3244
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003245- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003246 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003247 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003248
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003249- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3250 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003251
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003252- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3253 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003254
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003255- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3256 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3257 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3258 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3259
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003260- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3261 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003262
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003263- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3264 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3265 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3266 and __imul__.
3267
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003268- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003269 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3270 is called.
3271
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003272- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3273 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3274 interpreter was compiled.
3275
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003276- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3277 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3278 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003279 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003280 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3281 1, not 2.
3282
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003283- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3284 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3285 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3286 limit.
3287
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003288- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3289 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3290 bug #623464.
3291
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003292- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3293 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3294 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3295 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3296
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003297Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003298-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003299
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003300- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3301
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003302- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3303 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3304 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3305 with Python 2.3a2.
3306
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003307- os.path exposes getctime.
3308
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003309- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003310 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003311 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003312 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003313 unit tests of floating point results.
3314
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003315- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3316 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3317 has been increased.
3318
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003319- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3320 executed.
3321
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003322- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3323 postinstallation script.
3324
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003325- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3326 test the current module.
3327
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003328- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003329 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3330 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3331 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3332 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3333
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003334- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003335 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003336 Ward's Optik package.
3337
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003338- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3339 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3340 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3341 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3342
3343- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3344 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003345 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003346
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003347- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3348 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3349 shelf are binary pickles.
3350
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003351- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3352 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3353
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003354- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3355 modules are iterators now.
3356
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003357- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3358 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3359 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3360 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3361 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3362 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003363
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003364- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3365 with their entity value.
3366
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003367- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3368
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003369- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3370 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003371
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003372- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3373 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003374 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003375
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003376- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3377 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3378 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3379 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3380 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3381 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3382 main():
3383
3384 import locale
3385 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3386
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003387- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3388 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3389
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003390- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3391 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3392 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3393 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3394 to the new standard.
3395
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003396- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3397 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3398 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3399 an extension to the database.
3400
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003401- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3402 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3403 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3404 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003405 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003406
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003407- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003408 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003409
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003410- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3411 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3412 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3413 bounded integers.
3414
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003415- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3416 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3417 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3418 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3419 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3420 in existence.
3421
3422 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3423 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3424 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3425 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3426 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3427 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3428
3429 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3430 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3431 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3432 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3433
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003434- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3435 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3436 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3437
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003438- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3439
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003440- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3441 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3442 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3443 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3444
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003445- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3446 argument.
3447
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003448- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3449 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3450 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3451 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3452 [SF patch 560794].
3453
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003454- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3455 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3456 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003457 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3458 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3459 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003460
3461- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3462 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003463
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003464- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3465 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3466 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3467 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003468
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003469- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3470 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3471 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3472 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3473 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3474
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003475- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003476
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003477- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3478
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003479- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3480 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3481 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3482 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3483 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3484 identical to None.
3485
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003486- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3487 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3488 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3489 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3490 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3491 results now.
3492
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003493- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3494 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3495
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003496- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3497 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3498 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3499 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3500 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3501 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3502 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3503 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3504
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003505- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3506
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003507- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3508 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3509
3510- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3511 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3512 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3513 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3514 and other systems.
3515
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003516- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3517 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3518 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3519 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 +00003520 work well with these.
3521
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003522- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3523
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003524- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003525 connections.
3526
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003527- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3528 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3529 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3530
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003531- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3532 sets
3533
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003534- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3535 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3536 name.
3537
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003538- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3539 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3540 passed in.
3541
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003542- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003543 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003544 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3545 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003546
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003547- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3548
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003549- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3550
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003551- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3552 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3553 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3554
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003555- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3556 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3557 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3558 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003559 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003560
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003561- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003562 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003563 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003564
3565- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3566 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3567 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3568
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003569- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003570 the value of its expression argument.
3571
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003572- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3573 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3574 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3575
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003576- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3577 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3578 skipstone browser was included.
3579
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003580- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3581 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3582
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003583Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003584-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003585
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003586- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3587 names in addition to accepting file names.
3588
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003589- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3590 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3591 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3592 still used and useful.)
3593
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003594- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3595 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3596 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3597 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003598
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003599- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3600 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3601 the generated binary.
3602
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003603Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003604-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003605
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003606- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3607
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003608- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3609 except in the hands of experts.
3610
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003611- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003612 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3613 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3614 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003615
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003616- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3617 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3618 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3619 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3620 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3621 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3622 builds.
3623
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003624- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3625 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3626 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3627 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3628 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3629 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3630 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3631 new type.
3632
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003633- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003634
3635 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3636 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3637 positive infinities.
3638
3639 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3640 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3641 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3642 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3643 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3644 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3645 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3646
3647 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3648
3649 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3650
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003651- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3652 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3653 size of the executable.
3654
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003655- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3656 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3657 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3658 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003659
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003660- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3661
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003662- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3663 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3664 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003665
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003666- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3667 well as Unix.
3668
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003669- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3670 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3671 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3672 modules in the README file for details.
3673
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003674C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003675-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003676
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003677- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3678 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003679 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003680 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003681 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003682
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003683- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3684 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3685 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3686 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3687 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3688 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003689 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003690 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3691 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3692 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3693 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3694 aligned.)
3695
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003696- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3697 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3698 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3699
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003700- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3701 level.
3702
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003703- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3704 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3705 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3706 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3707 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3708
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003709- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3710 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3711 code.
3712
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003713- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3714 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3715 adjusting for negative indices.
3716
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003717- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3718 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3719 object.
3720
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003721- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3722 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3723 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3724
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003725- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3726 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003727
3728- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3729
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003730- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3731 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3732 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3733 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3734
3735- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3736
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003737- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003738
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003739- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003740 without going through the buffer API.
3741
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003742- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003743
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003744- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3745 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3746 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3747 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3748
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003749- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3750 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3751
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003752- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003753 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3754
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003755New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003756-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003757
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003758- OpenVMS is now supported.
3759
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003760- AtheOS is now supported.
3761
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003762- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3763
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003764- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3765
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003766Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003767-----
3768
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003769- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3770 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3771 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003772
3773Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003774-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003775
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003776- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3777 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3778 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3779 bugs.
3780 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003781 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003782 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3783 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003784 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003785
3786- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003787 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003788
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003789- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3790 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3791
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003792- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3793 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003794 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003795 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3796
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003797- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3798 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3799 use files" uninstall option).
3800
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003801- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3802
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003803- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3804 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3805
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003806- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3807 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3808 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3809
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003810- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3811 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3812 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3813 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3814 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003815 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3816 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3817 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003818
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003819- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003820 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003821 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3822 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3823 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3824 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3825 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3826 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3827 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3828 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3829 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3830 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3831 work around.
3832
3833- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3834 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3835 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3836 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3837 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3838 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3839 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3840 specified with O_CREAT too).
3841
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003842Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003843----
3844
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003845- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003846
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003847- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3848 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3849 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3850
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003851- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3852 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3853 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3854
3855- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3856 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3857 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3858 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3859 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3860 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3861 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3862 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003863
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003864- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3865 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3866 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003867
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003868- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3869 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3870 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3871 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3872 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003873
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003874- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3875 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3876 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003877
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003878- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3879 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003880
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003881- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3882 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3883 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3884 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3885 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003886
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003887- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3888 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3889 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3890
3891- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3892 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3893 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003894
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003895- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3896 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3897 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3898 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003899 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003900
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003901- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
3902 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003903
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003904- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
3905 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003906
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003907- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00003908 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003909 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
3910 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003911
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003912
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003913What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003914===============================
3915
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003916*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
3917
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003918Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003919--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003920
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003921- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3922 with a custom metaclass.
3923
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003924Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003925-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003926
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003927- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3928 are proxies.
3929
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003930Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003931-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003932
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003933- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3934 very short strings.
3935
3936- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3937 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3938 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3939 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3940 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3941
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003942Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003943-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003944
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003945- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3946 close or delete time).
3947
3948- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3949 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3950
3951- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3952
3953- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003954 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003955
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003956Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003957-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003958
3959Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003960-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003961
3962C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003963-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003964
3965New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003966-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003967
3968Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003969-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003970
3971Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003972-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003973
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003974- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3975
3976- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3977 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3978
3979- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3980 deleted at process exit time.
3981
3982- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3983 in backslash.
3984
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003985Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003986----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003987
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003988- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
3989 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
3990 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3991
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003992
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003993What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003994===========================
3995
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003996*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3997
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003998Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003999--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004000
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004001- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4002 been extensively updated. See
4003
4004 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4005
4006 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4007
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004008- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4009 deleted!
4010
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004011- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4012 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4013 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4014 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4015 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4016
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004017- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4018
4019 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4020 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4021
4022 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4023 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4024 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4025 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4026 supported anyway.
4027
4028 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4029 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4030
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004031- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4032 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4033 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4034 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4035 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004036
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004037- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4038 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4039 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4040
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004041Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004042-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004043
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004044- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4045 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4046 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4047 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4048 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4049 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004050 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4051 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4052 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4053 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004054
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004055- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4056 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4057 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4058
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004059Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004060-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004061
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004062- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4063
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004064Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004065-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004066
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004067- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4068 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4069 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4070 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4071 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4072 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4073
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004074- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4075
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004076- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4077
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004078- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4079
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004080- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4081 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4082 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4083
4084- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4085
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004086Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004087-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004088
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004089- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4090 off a search on Google.
4091
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004092Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004093-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004094
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004095- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4096 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4097 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4098 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4099 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4100 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4101 other platforms should do likewise.
4102
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004103- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4104 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4105 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4106
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004107C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004108-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004109
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004110- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4111 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4112 producing key-value pairs.
4113
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004114- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004115 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004116 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4117 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4118 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4119 previously went unchallenged.
4120
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004121New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004122-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004123
4124Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004125-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004126
4127Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004128-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004129
4130Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004131----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004132
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004133- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4134 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004135
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004136- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4137 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4138 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4139 home.
4140
4141
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004142What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004143===========================
4144
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004145*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4146
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004147Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004148--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004149
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004150- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4151 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004152
4153 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004154 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004155
4156 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4157 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004158 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004159 This needs to be documented.
4160
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004161- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4162 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4163
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004164- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4165 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4166 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4167
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004168- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4169 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4170
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004171- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4172 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4173 class forbids it).
4174
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004175- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4176 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4177 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4178
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004179- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4180
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004181Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004182-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004183
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004184- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4185 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004186 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004187
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004188- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4189 (like 1 + '').
4190
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004191Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004192-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004193
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004194- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4195 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4196 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4197 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004198 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004199 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4200
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004201- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4202 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4203 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4204 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4205
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004206- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4207 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004208 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4209 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4210 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004211
4212- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4213 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004214
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004215- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4216 bytes on its input.
4217
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004218Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004219-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004220
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004221- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004222 convenience function.
4223
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004224- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4225 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4226 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004227 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4228 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4229 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4230 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4231 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4232 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004233
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004234- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4235 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4236 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4237 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4238
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004239- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4240 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4241 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4242
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004243- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4244 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4245 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4246 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4247
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004248- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4249 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004250 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004251 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4252 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4253 new -l and -e options.
4254
4255- statcache is now deprecated.
4256
4257- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4258 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004259 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004260 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4261 time properly taken into account.
4262
4263- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4264 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4265 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4266 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4267
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004268Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004269-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004270
4271Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004272-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004273
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004274- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4275 is built with libdb3 if available.
4276
4277- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4278
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004279C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004280-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004281
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004282- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4283 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4284 PySequence_Size().
4285
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004286- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4287
4288- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4289 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4290 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4291
4292- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4293 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4294
4295- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4296 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4297
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004298New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004299-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004300
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004301- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4302 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4303
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004304- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4305 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4306
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004307- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4308
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004309Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004310-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004311
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004312- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4313 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4314
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004315Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004316-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004317
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004318Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004319----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004320
4321- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4322 removed completely in the next release.
4323
4324- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4325 OSX.
4326
4327- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4328 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4329
4330- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4331
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004332
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004333What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004334===========================
4335
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004336*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4337
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004338Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004339--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004340
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004341- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004342 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004343 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004344 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4345 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004346 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4347 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004348 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4349 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004350
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004351- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4352 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4353
4354- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4355 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4356
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004357Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004358-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004359
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004360- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4361 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4362 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4363 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4364 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4365 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4366 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4367 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4368
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004369- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4370 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4371 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4372 example).
4373
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004374- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004375 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004376 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004377 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004378
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004379- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4380 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4381 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004382 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004383
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004384- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4385 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4386 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4387 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4388 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4389 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4390
4391 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4392
4393 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4394
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004395Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004396-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004397
4398- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4399
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004400- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4401
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004402- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4403 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004404
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004405- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4406 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4407 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4408 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4409 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4410 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004411 attributes.
4412
4413- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4414 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4415 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004416
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004417- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4418 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4419 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004420
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004421- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4422 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4423 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004424 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4425 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4426
4427- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4428 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004429
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004430Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004431-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004432
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004433- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4434 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4435
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004436- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4437 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4438 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4439 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4440
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004441- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4442 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4443 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4444 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4445
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004446 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4447 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4448 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4449 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4450 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4451 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4452 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4453 without losing information).
4454
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004455- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004456 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4457 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4458 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4459 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4460 module).
4461
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004462 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004463 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4464 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4465 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4466 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004467
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004468- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004469 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4470 encoding.
4471
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004472- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4473 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4474
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004475- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004476 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4477
4478- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4479 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4480 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4481 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4482
4483- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4484
4485- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4486 ON, and OFF.
4487
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004488- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4489 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4490
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004491Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004492-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004493
4494- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4495 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4496 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004497
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004498- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4499 been added: -X and -E.
4500
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004501Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004502-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004503
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004504- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4505 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4506
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004507C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004508-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004509
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004510- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4511 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4512 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4513 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4514 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4515
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004516- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4517 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4518 as long) arguments.
4519
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004520- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4521 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4522 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4523 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4524 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4525 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4526
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004527- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4528 input.
4529
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004530New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004531-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004532
4533Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004534-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004535
4536Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004537-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004538
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004539- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4540 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4541 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4542
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004543- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4544 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4545 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004546 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004547
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004548 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4549 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4550 import signal
4551 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004552
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004553 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004554 while 1:
4555 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004556 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004557 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4558 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4559 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4560 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004561
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004562
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004563What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4564===========================
4565
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004566*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4567
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004568Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004569--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004570
4571- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4572 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4573 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4574
4575- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4576 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4577 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4578 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4579 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4580 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4581 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004582
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004583- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004584 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004585 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4586 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4587 associate a docstring with a property.
4588
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004589- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4590 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4591 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4592 other built-in object types.
4593
4594- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4595 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4596 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4597 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4598 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4599
4600- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4601 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4602
4603- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4604 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004605 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004606 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4607 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4608 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4609 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4610 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4611
4612- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4613 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4614 class.
4615
4616- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4617 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4618 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4619 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4620
4621- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4622 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4623 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4624 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4625
4626- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4627 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4628
4629- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4630 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4631 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4632 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4633 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004634 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004635 with the same value as s.
4636
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004637- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4638
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004639Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004640----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004641
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004642- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4643
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004644- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4645 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4646 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4647 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4648 objects.
4649
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004650- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4651 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004652 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4653 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4654
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004655- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4656 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4657 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4658
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004659Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004660-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004661
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004662- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4663 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4664 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4665 by the instances.
4666
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004667- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4668 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4669 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4670
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004671- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4672 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4673 before the entire comparison is complete.
4674
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004675- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4676 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4677 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4678
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004679- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4680 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4681 getwriter().
4682
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004683- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4684 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4685
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004686- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004687 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4688 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4689
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004690- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4691 iterable object.
4692
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004693- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4694 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004695
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004696- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4697 authentication.
4698
4699- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4700 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004701
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004702- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004703 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4704 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4705 a sample driver.)
4706
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004707Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004708-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004709
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004710- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4711 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4712 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4713 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4714 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4715 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4716 kernel has large file support.
4717
4718- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4719 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4720 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4721 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4722 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4723
4724- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4725 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4726 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4727
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004728C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004729-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004730
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004731- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4732 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4733
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004734New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004735-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004736
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004737- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4738 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4739
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004740Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004741-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004742
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004743- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4744 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4745 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4746 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4747 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4748
4749- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4750 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4751 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4752 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4753
4754- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4755 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4756
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004757Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004758-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004759
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004760- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004761 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4762 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004763
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004764
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004765What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4766===========================
4767
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004768*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4769
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004770Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004771----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004772
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004773- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4774 big to represent as a C double.
4775
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004776- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4777 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4778 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4779 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4780 restriction).
4781
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004782- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4783 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4784 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4785 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4786 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4787
4788 >>> dir([])
4789 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4790 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4791 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4792 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4793 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4794 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4795 'reverse', 'sort']
4796
4797 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4798
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004799- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004800 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4801 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4802 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4803 OverflowError exception.
4804
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004805- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004806 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004807 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4808 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4809 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4810 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4811 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004812 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004813 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4814 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4815
4816 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4817 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4818 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4819 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004820
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004821- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004822 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4823 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4824 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4825 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4826 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4827 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4828 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4829 once it is created.
4830
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004831- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4832 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4833 (key, value) pairs.
4834
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004835- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004836 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4837 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4838
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004839- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4840 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4841 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4842 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4843 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004844
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004845- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004846 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4847 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4848
4849 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4850
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004851- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004852 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4853
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004854Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004855-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004856
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004857- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004858 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4859 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004860
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004861- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4862 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4863 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4864 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4865 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4866 in this area anymore).
4867
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004868- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4869 threading.Timer.
4870
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004871- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4872 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4873
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004874- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004875 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4876
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004877- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004878 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4879 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4880 converted to Python longs.
4881
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004882- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004883 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4884
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004885- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4886 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4887 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4888
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004889Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004890-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004891
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004892- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4893 division operators as per PEP 238.
4894
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004895Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004896-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004897
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004898- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4899 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4900 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
4901 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
4902
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004903C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004904-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004905
4906- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004907
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004908- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
4909 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004910 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004911
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004912 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
4913 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004914 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004915 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004916
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004917- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004918 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
4919 module:
4920
4921 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004922
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004923 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4924 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004925
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004926 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4927 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004928
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004929 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4930
4931 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4932
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004933- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004934 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4935 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4936 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004937
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004938New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004939-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004940
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004941- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4942 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4943 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4944 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4945 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004946
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004947Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004948-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004949
4950Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004951-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004952
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004953- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4954 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4955 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4956 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004957 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4958 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4959 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4960 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4961 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004962
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004963- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004964 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4965
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004966
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004967What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4968===========================
4969
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004970*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4971
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004972Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004973-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004974
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004975- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4976 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4977
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004978- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4979 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4980 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004981
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004982- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4983 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4984 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4985 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004986
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004987- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
4988
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004989- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004990
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004991Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004992-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004993
4994- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004995 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004996 the module docstring for details.
4997
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004998Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004999-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005000
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005001- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005002 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5003 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5004 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005005
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005006- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5007 Nick Mathewson.
5008
5009Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005010----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005011
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005012- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5013 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5014 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5015 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5016 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5017 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5018 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5019 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5020
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005021- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5022 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5023 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5024 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5025
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005026- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5027 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5028 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5029 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5030 come a long way).
5031
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005032- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5033 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5034 write filters for these warnings).
5035
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005036- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5037 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5038 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5039 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5040 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5041
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005042- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5043 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5044 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5045 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5046 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5047 older distribution.
5048
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005049Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005050-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005051
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005052- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5053 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005054 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005055
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005056- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5057 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5058 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5059
5060- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5061
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005062- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5063
5064- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5065
5066- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5067
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005068- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005069
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005070- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5071
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005072New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005073-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005074
5075C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005076-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005077
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005078- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5079 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5080 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5081 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5082 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5083 against buffer overruns.
5084
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005085- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005086 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5087 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005088 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5089 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5090 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5091
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005092- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5093 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5094 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5095 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5096 deprecated.
5097
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005098Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005099-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005100
5101- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5102 relevant is found.
5103
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005104
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005105What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005106===========================
5107
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005108*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5109
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005110Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005111----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005112
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005113- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5114 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5115 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5116 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5117 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5118 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5119 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5120 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005121 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005122 repaired.
5123
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005124- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005125 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005126 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5127 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5128 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5129 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5130 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5131 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5132 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5133 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5134
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005135- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5136 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5137 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5138 leading BMO character).
5139
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005140- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5141 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5142 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5143
5144 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5145 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5146 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005147
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005148 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5149 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5150 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5151 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5152 for various simple to use conversions.
5153
5154 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5155 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5156
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005157 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5158 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5159 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5160 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5161 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5162 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5163 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5164 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5165 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5166 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5167 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5168 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5169 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5170 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5171 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005172
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005173- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5174 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5175 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005176 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005177 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005178
5179 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005180 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5181 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5182 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5183 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5184 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005185 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5186 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005187
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005188 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5189 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5190 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005191 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005192
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005193- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5194 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5195 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5196 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5197 floating arithmetic,
5198
5199 x = 9007199254740992.0
5200 print long(x)
5201
5202 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5203 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5204 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5205 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5206 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5207 functions are of good quality).
5208
5209 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5210 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5211 algorithms to break.
5212
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005213- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5214 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5215 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5216 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5217 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5218 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5219 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5220 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5221 order.
5222
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005223- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5224 operation along the most common code paths.
5225
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005226- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5227 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5228
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005229- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5230 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5231 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5232 {}.update(UserDict())
5233
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005234- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5235 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5236 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5237 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5238 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5239 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5240 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5241 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5242
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005243- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005244 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005245
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005246 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005247 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5248 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005249 join() method of strings
5250 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005251 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5252 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005253 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005254 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005255
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005256- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5257 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5258
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005259- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5260 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5261
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005262- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5263 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5264 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5265 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5266
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005267- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5268 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005269 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005270 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5271 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005272
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005273- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5274
5275
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005276Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005277-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005278
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005279- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005280 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005281 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5282 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5283
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005284- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5285 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5286
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005287- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5288 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5289 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5290 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5291
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005292- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5293 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5294 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5295
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005296- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5297
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005298- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5299
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005300- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5301 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5302 that are still imported into string.py).
5303
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005304- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5305
5306- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5307 Now it does.
5308
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005309- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5310
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005311- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5312 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5313 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5314 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5315 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005316 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5317 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005318
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005319- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5320 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5321 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5322 'help(object)'.
5323
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005324Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005325-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005326
5327- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005328 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005329 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5330 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5331
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005332- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005333 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5334 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005335
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005336C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005337-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005338
5339- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5340 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005341
5342----
5343
5344**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**