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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000015- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
16 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
17
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000018- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
19 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
20 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
21
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000022- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
23
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000024- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
25 reference counts in some error exit cases.
26
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000027- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
28 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
29 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
30 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
31 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
32 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
33 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
34 realloc.
35
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +000036- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
37 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
38
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +000039- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
40 like their int counterparts.
41
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +000042- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
43 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
44 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
45 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
46 for a longer write-up of the problem).
47
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +000048- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
49 serializing floats.
50
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +000051- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
52 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
53 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
54
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +000055- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
56 278.
57
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000058- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
59 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
60 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
61 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
62 to the base class has been moved the prroper nb_* magic slot and out of
63 PyNumber_*().
64 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
65
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +000066- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
67 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
68 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
69 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
70
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +000071- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
72 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
73 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
74 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
75 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
76
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +000077- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
78 disabled caused a crash.
79
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000080- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
81 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
82
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000083- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000084 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
85
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +000086- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
87
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000088- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +000089 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
90 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
91 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000092
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +000093- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
94
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +000095- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
96 returning None.
97
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000098- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +000099 ('\') with a specific error message.
100
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000101- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
102
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000103- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
104 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
105
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000106- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000107 an ferror() call.
108
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000109- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
110 list.sort().
111
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000112- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
113 (2+3) --> (5).
114
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000115- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
116
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000117- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
118 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000119
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000120- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
121 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
122 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
123
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000124- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
125 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
126 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
127
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000128Extension Modules
129-----------------
130
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000131- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
132 on Windows.
133
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000134- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
135 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
136
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000137- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
138 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
139 for large or negative values.
140
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000141- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000142 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000143
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000144- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
145
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000146- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
147 if available on the platform.
148
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000149- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
150 available on the platform.
151
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000152- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
153 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
154
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000155- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
156
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000157- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
158 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
159 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
160
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000161- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
162
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000163- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
164 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
165
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000166- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000167 file size.
168
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000169- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
170
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000171- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
172 {remove_history,replace_history}
173
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000174- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
175 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000176
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000177- stat_float_times is now True.
178
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000179- array.array objects are now picklable.
180
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000181- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
182 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
183
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000184- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
185 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
186 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
187
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000188- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
189 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000190
191Library
192-------
193
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000194- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
195
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000196- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
197
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000198- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
199 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
200
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000201- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
202 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
203 Tkdnd.
204
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000205- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
206 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
207
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000208- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
209 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
210
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000211- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000212 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
213
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000214- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
215 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
216
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000217- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
218 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
219
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000220- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000221 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000222
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000223- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
224
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000225- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
226 error messages.
227
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000228- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
229
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000230- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
231 Bug #1224621.
232
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000233- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
234 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
235 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
236 terminates by raising StopIteration.
237
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000238- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
239
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000240- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
241 component of the path.
242
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000243- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
244 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
245 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
246 class at all.
247
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000248- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
249 files to PyPI.
250
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000251- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
252 them to PyPI.
253
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000254- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
255 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
256 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
257 work as expected.
258
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000259- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
260 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
261
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000262- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000263 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
264
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000265- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
266
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000267- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
268 to build.
269
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000270- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
271 symbolic links on Windows.
272
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000273- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000274 profile.py if available.
275
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000276- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
277
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000278- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
279 in LWPCookieJar.
280
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000281- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
282
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000283- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
284
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000285- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
286
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000287- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
288
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000289- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
290
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000291- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
292
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000293- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
294
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000295- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
296
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000297- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
298 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
299 be exploited in various ways.
300
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000301- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
302
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000303- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
304
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000305- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
306
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000307- Enhancements to the csv module:
308
309 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000310 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000311 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000312 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
313 reporting.
314 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
315 dictates.
316 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000317 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000318 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000319 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
320 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000321 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
322 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000323 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000324 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
325 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
326 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
327 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
328 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
329 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
330 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
331 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
332 without first creating a dialect class.
333 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
334 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
335 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000336 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000337 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
338 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000339 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
340 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
341 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
342 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000343 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
344 This has been fixed.
345
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000346- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
347 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
348 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
349 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
350
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000351- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
352
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000353- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
354 (Bug #951915).
355
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000356- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
357 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
358 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000359 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000360
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000361- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
362
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000363- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
364 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
365
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000366- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
367
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000368- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
369
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000370- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
371
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000372- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
373
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000374- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
375
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000376- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
377 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
378 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
379
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000380- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000381 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000382
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000383- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
384 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
385 tokenizer with very long source lines.
386
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000387- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
388 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
389
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000390- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
391 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000392
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000393- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
394 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
395
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000396- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
397 correctly.
398
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000399- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
400 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
401 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
402 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
403 between two lines.
404
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000405
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000406Build
407-----
408
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000409- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
410 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
411
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000412- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
413 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
414
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000415- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
416 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
417 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000418 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000419
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000420- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
421 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
422 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
423
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000424- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
425
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000426- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
427 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
428
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000429- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
430 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
431 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
432 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
433 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
434 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
435 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
436 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
437
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000438- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
439 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
440 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
441 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
442
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000443
444C API
445-----
446
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000447- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
448
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000449- Removed PyRange_New().
450
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000451
452Tests
453-----
454
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000455- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000456
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000457
458Documentation
459-------------
460
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000461- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
462
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000463- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
464
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000465- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
466
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000467- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
468
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000469- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
470
471- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
472
473- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
474
475- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
476
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000477- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
478 Closes bug #1166582.
479
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000480- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
481 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
482 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
483
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000484Mac
485---
486
487
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000488New platforms
489-------------
490
491- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
492
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000493
494Tools/Demos
495-----------
496
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000497- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
498
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000499- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000500
501
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000502What's New in Python 2.4 final?
503===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000504
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000505*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000506
507Core and builtins
508-----------------
509
510- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
511 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
512 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
513
514
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000515What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
516==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000517
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000518*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000519
520Core and builtins
521-----------------
522
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000523- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
524 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
525 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
526
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000527
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000528Library
529-------
530
531- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
532 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
533 raised is re-raised.
534
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000535- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
536 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
537
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000538- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
539 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
540 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
541 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
542 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
543 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
544 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
545 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
546 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
547 by the slice are recomputed now.
548
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000549- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000550
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000551Build
552-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000553
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000554- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
555 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
556 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000557
558C API
559-----
560
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000561- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
562
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000563
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000564What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
565================================
566
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000567*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000568
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000569License
570-------
571
572The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
573is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
574changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
575Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
576intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
577durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
578the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
579License::
580
581 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
582
583says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
584to Python 2.1.1.
585
586The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
587License Version 2.
588
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000589Core and builtins
590-----------------
591
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000592- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
593 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
594 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
595 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
596 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
597 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
598 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
599 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
600 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
601 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
602
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000603- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000604
605Extension Modules
606-----------------
607
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000608- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
609 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
610 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
611 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000612
613Library
614-------
615
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000616- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
617 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
618 returned.
619
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000620- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
621
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000622- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
623 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
624
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000625- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
626
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000627- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
628 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000629
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000630- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
631
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000632- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
633
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000634- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000635 the source code is updated and reloaded.
636
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000637Build
638-----
639
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000640- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000641
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000642What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
643================================
644
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000645*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000646
647Core and builtins
648-----------------
649
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000650- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000651 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
652
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000653- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
654 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
655 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
656 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
657
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000658- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
659 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
660
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000661- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
662 constant.
663
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000664- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
665 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
666 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
667 large), and to anomalies such as
668 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
669 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
670 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
671 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000672
673Extension modules
674-----------------
675
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000676- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
677 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000678 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
679 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
680 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000681
682Library
683-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000684
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000685- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000686 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000687 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
688 --swig-cpp.
689
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000690- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
691 it is set.
692
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000693- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000694
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000695- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
696 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
697 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
698 Closes bug #1039270.
699
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000700- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000701
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000702 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000703 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
704 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
705 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
706 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
707 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
708 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
709 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
710 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
711 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
712 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
713 + Updates to documentation.
714
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000715- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
716 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
717 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
718 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
719
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000720- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000721
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000722- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
723 applications should use the getmember function.
724
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000725- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
726
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000727- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
728 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
729 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
730 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
731 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
732 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
733 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
734 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
735 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
736
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000737- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
738 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000739 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000740
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000741- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
742 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
743 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
744 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
745 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
746 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
747 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
748 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000749
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000750- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
751 the new public features (of which there are many).
752
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000753- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000754 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
755 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
756 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
757 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000758 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000759
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000760- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
761
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000762- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
763 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
764 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
765 options.
766
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000767- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
768 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
769 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
770 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
771 conditions under which non-string values work.
772
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000773Build
774-----
775
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000776- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
777 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
778 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
779
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000780- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
781 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
782 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
783 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
784 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000785
786C API
787-----
788
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000789- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
790 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
791
792- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
793
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000794- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
795 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
796 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
797 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
798 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
799 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
800 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
801 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
802 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
803
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000804- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
805
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000806- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
807 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
808 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000809
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000810Tests
811-----
812
813- test__locale ported to unittest
814
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000815Mac
816---
817
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000818- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
819 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
820 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000821
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000822Tools/Demos
823-----------
824
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000825- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
826 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
827 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
828 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
829 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000830
831
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000832What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
833=================================
834
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000835*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000836
837Core and builtins
838-----------------
839
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000840- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000841 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
842
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000843- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
844 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
845 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
846 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
847 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
848 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
849 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
850 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000851 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
852 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
853 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
854 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
855 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000856
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000857- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
858 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
859 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
860 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
861 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
862
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000863- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
864
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000865- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
866 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
867
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000868- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
869 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
870 modified the list.
871
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000872- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
873 functions is now writable.
874
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000875- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
876 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
877 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
878 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
879
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000880- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
881 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
882 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
883 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
884 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000885
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000886- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
887 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
888
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000889Extension modules
890-----------------
891
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000892- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
893
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000894- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
895 data.
896
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000897- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
898 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
899 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
900 supposed to have been truncated away.
901
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000902- Added socket.socketpair().
903
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000904- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
905 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
906
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000907- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000908 versions of Python, have now been removed.
909
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000910Library
911-------
912
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000913- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000914 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000915
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000916- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
917 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
918
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000919- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
920 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
921
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000922- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
923
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000924- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
925 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000926
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000927- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
928 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
929
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000930- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
931
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000932- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
933
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000934- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
935
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000936- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
937 Percivall.
938
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000939- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
940 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
941
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000942- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
943 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
944 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000945 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000946
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000947- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
948 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
949 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
950 and exponent.
951
952- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
953
954- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +0000955 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000956 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
957
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000958- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
959 to the readline module.
960
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000961- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000962 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
963 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000964
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000965- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
966 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
967 contains symlinks.
968
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000969- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
970 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
971
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000972- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
973 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
974 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
975
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000976- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
977 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
978 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
979 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
980 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
981 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
982 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
983 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
984 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
985 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
986 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
987 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
988 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
989
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000990- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
991
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000992Tools/Demos
993-----------
994
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000995- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
996 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
997
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000998- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
999
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001000Build
1001-----
1002
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001003- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1004 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1005 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1006 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1007 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1008 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1009 plans to do so.
1010
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001011- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1012 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1013
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001014- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1015 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1016
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001017- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1018 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1019
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001020- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1021 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1022
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001023- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1024 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1025
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001026C API
1027-----
1028
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001029..
1030
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001031Documentation
1032-------------
1033
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001034- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1035 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1036
1037- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1038 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1039 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001040
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001041New platforms
1042-------------
1043
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001044- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1045
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001046Tests
1047-----
1048
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001049..
1050
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001051Windows
1052-------
1053
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001054- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1055 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1056 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1057 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1058 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1059 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1060 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1061 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1062 the problem.
1063
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001064Mac
1065---
1066
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001067..
1068
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001069
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001070What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1071=================================
1072
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001073*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001074
1075Core and builtins
1076-----------------
1077
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001078- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1079 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1080 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1081 sensitive code.
1082
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001083- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001084 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001085
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001086 @staticmethod
1087 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001088
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001089 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001090
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001091- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1092 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1093 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1094 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1095 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1096 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1097 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1098 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1099 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1100 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1101 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1102
1103 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1104 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1105 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1106 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1107 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1108 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1109 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1110
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001111- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1112 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1113
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001114- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001115 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001116
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001117- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001118 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001119 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1120
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001121- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001122 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1123 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1124
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001125- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1126 types that support garbage collection.
1127
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001128- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1129
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001130- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1131 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1132 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1133 Jython.
1134
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001135- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1136
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001137- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1138 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1139
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001140- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1141 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1142 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001143
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001144- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1145 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1146 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1147
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001148Extension modules
1149-----------------
1150
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001151- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1152
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001153Library
1154-------
1155
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001156- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1157 TIS-620
1158
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001159- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1160 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1161 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1162 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1163 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1164 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1165 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1166 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1167 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1168 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1169
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001170- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1171
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001172- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1173 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1174 same as when the argument is omitted).
1175 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1176
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001177- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1178
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001179- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1180 schemes are offered.
1181
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001182- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1183
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001184- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1185 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1186 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1187
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001188- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1189
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001190- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1191 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1192
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001193- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1194 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1195 when dummy_threading is being used.
1196
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001197- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1198 from a tarfile.
1199
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001200- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001201 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001202
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001203- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1204 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1205 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1206 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1207
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001208- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1209 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1210
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001211- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1212 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1213 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1214 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1215 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1216 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1217 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1218 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1219 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1220 by some other method in progress).
1221
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001222- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1223 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1224 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001225
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001226- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1227
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001228- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1229 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1230 AM Kuchling.
1231
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001232- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1233 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1234 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1235
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001236- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1237 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1238 instead of unsigned.
1239
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001240- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001241 no longer part of the public API.
1242
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001243- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1244 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1245 string methods of the same name).
1246
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001247- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001248 SF patch 945642.
1249
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001250- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1251
1252 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1253
1254 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1255 DocTestSuites.
1256
1257- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1258 that provide thread-local data.
1259
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001260- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1261 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1262
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001263- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1264
1265- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1266 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1267 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1268
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001269- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1270
1271 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1272 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1273 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001274
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001275 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1276 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1277 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1278 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1279
1280 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1281 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1282
1283 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1284 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1285 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1286 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1287
1288 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1289 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1290 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1291 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1292 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1293
1294 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1295 wrapping help output.
1296
1297 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1298 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1299 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001300
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001301C API
1302-----
1303
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001304- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1305 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1306 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1307 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1308 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1309 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1310 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1311 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1312 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1313 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1314 its visible semantics have not changed.
1315
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001316- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1317 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1318
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001319Documentation
1320-------------
1321
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001322- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001323
1324 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001325 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001326
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001327 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001328
1329 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1330
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001331- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001332
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001333Tests
1334-----
1335
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001336- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001337 platforms that use the Makefile.
1338
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001339- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1340 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1341 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1342
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001343
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001344What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1345=================================
1346
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001347*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001348
1349Core and builtins
1350-----------------
1351
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001352- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1353 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1354 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1355 objects now (one object instead of three).
1356
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001357- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1358 Windows DLLs.
1359
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001360- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1361 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001362
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001363- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1364 a new .pyc magic.
1365
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001366- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1367 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1368 be there.
1369
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001370- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1371 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1372 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1373
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001374- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1375 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1376 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1377
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001378- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1379
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001380- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1381 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1382 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001383
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001384- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1385 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1386
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001387- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1388
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001389- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001390 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001391
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001392- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1393
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001394- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1395
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001396- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1397 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1398
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001399- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1400 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1401 Fixes bug #858016 .
1402
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001403- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1404 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1405 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1406
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001407- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1408 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1409 improves their performance (about 35%).
1410
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001411- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1412 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1413 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1414
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001415- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1416 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1417 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1418 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1419
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001420- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1421 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001422 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001423 length is not known).
1424
1425- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1426 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001427 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1428 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001429 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1430
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001431- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1432 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1433
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001434- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1435 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1436 keyword arguments.
1437
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001438- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1439 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1440 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1441
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001442- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1443 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1444 cases.
1445
1446- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1447 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1448 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1449 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1450 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1451 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1452 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1453 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1454 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1455 a release build.
1456
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001457- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1458 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1459
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001460- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001461 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001462
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001463- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1464 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1465 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1466 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1467 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1468 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1469 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1470 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1471 destroyed.
1472
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001473- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1474 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1475 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1476 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1477 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1478 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1479 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1480 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1481
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001482- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1483 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1484 character other than a space.
1485
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001486- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1487 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1488 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1489 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1490 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1491 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1492 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1493 attributes with the same name.
1494
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001495- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1496 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1497 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1498 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1499 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1500 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1501 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1502 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1503 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1504 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1505 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1506 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1507 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1508 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001509
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001510- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1511 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1512 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1513 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1514 This has been repaired.
1515
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001516- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1517
1518- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1519
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001520- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1521 over a sequence.
1522
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001523- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001524 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001525
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001526- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1527
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001528- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1529 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1530 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1531 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1532 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1533 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1534 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1535 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1536
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001537- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1538 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1539 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1540
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001541- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1542 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1543 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1544 freelist.
1545
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001546- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1547 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1548
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001549- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1550 number.
1551
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001552- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1553 a TypeError exception.
1554
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001555- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1556 820195.
1557
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001558- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1559 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1560 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1561
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001562- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001563 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1564 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001565
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001566- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1567 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1568 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1569
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001570- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1571 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001572 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001573
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001574- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001575 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1576 the first call.
1577
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001578
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001579Extension modules
1580-----------------
1581
Georg Brandl33a5f2a2005-08-21 14:16:04 +00001582- Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines() for files containing one line without
1583 newlines.
1584
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001585- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1586 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1587
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001588- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1589 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1590 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1591 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1592 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1593 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1594 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001595
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001596- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1597
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001598- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1599
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001600- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1601 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1602
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001603- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1604 fewer false positives.
1605
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001606- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1607 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1608
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001609- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001610 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1611
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001612- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001613 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001614 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001615 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1616 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001617
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001618- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1619 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1620 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1621 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1622
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001623- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1624 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1625 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1626 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1627 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1628 #897625.
1629
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001630- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1631 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1632
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001633- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1634 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1635 and pops on either side of the deque.
1636
1637- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1638 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1639
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001640- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1641 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1642 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1643 other functions that expect a function argument.
1644
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001645- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1646
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001647- os.getsid was added.
1648
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001649- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1650 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1651 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1652
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001653- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1654
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001655- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1656
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001657- readline.clear_history was added.
1658
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001659- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1660
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001661- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1662
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001663- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1664
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001665- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1666
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001667- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1668
1669- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1670
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001671- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1672
1673- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1674
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001675- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1676 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1677 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1678
1679- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1680 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1681 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1682 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1683 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1684 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1685 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1686
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001687- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1688 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1689 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1690 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001691
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001692- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001693 iterators from a single iterable.
1694
1695- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1696 of raising a TypeError exception.
1697
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001698- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1699 as parameter.
1700
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001701Library
1702-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001703
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001704- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1705
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001706- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1707 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1708 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001709
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001710- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1711 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1712 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001713
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001714- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001715
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001716- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1717 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001718
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001719- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1720 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1721
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001722- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1723
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001724- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001725 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001726
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001727- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001728 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001729
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001730- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1731
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001732- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1733 on cygwin and mingw32.
1734
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001735- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1736
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001737- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1738 module.
1739
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001740- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1741 installation scheme for all platforms.
1742
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001743- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001744 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001745
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001746- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1747 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1748 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1749
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001750- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1751 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1752 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1753
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001754- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1755
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001756- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1757
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001758- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1759 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1760
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001761- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1762 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1763 type pattern with the same value exists.
1764
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001765- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1766 when run from the command prompt).
1767
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001768- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1769 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1770
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001771- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1772 default sort).
1773
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001774- Added global runctx function to profile module
1775
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001776- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1777
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001778- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1779
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001780- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1781
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001782- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001783 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1784 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1785 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1786 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1787 accordingly.
1788
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001789- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1790 decoding standards.
1791
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001792- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1793 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1794 called for all requests.
1795
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001796- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1797 they are passed to the compiler.
1798
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001799- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1800 indent, width and depth.
1801
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001802- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1803 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1804
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001805- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1806 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1807
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001808- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1809
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001810- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1811
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001812- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1813
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001814- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1815 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1816
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001817- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001818 for better performance.
1819
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001820- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001821
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001822- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1823 a string).
1824
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001825- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1826
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001827- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1828
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001829- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1830
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001831- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1832
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001833- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1834 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1835 list of fieldnames.
1836
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001837- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1838 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1839
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001840- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1841
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001842- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1843 empty lists.
1844
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001845- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1846 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1847 and shelves.
1848
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001849- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1850 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1851
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001852- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001853 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1854 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001855
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001856- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1857 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001858 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001859
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001860- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001861 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1862 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1863
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001864- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1865 and removed in Py2.4.
1866
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001867- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1868
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001869- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1870
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001871Tools/Demos
1872-----------
1873
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001874- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1875 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1876
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001877- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1878
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001879- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1880 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1881 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1882 destination in situations where both files are given.
1883
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001884- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1885 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1886 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1887 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1888
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001889- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1890
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001891- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1892 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1893 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1894 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1895 now.
1896
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001897- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1898 in effect
1899
1900- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1901 C-c C-h
1902
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001903- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1904 -d option was given.
1905
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001906Build
1907-----
1908
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001909- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1910 build under OS X.
1911
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001912- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1913 --enable-profiling.
1914
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001915- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1916 is configured --with-tsc.
1917
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001918- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1919 on AMD64.
1920
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001921- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1922 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1923
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001924- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1925 removed.
1926
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001927- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1928 supported (see PEP 11).
1929
1930- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1931
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001932- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1933
1934- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1935 (see PEP 11).
1936
1937- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1938 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1939
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001940C API
1941-----
1942
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001943- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1944 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1945 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1946
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001947- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1948 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1949 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1950 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1951
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001952- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1953 generator objects.
1954
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001955- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1956 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001957 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1958 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001959
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001960- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1961 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1962
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001963- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1964 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1965 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1966 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1967 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1968
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001969- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1970 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1971 about 10% faster.
1972
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001973- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1974 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1975
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001976- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1977 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1978 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1979 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1980
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001981Windows
1982-------
1983
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001984- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1985 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1986 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1987 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1988
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001989- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1990 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1991 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1992
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001993
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001994What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1995===============================
1996
1997*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1998
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001999IDLE
2000----
2001
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002002- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2003 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2004 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2005 context-menu actions.
2006
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002007- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2008 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2009 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2010 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2011 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2012 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2013 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2014 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2015 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2016
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002017
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002018What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2019=============================================
2020
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002021*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002022
2023Core and builtins
2024-----------------
2025
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002026- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002027 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002028 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2029
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002030Extension modules
2031-----------------
2032
2033- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2034 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2035 than once. This has been fixed.
2036
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002037- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2038 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2039 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2040 call.
2041
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002042- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2043
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002044Library
2045-------
2046
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002047- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2048 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2049
2050- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2051 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2052 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2053 restored.
2054
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002055IDLE
2056----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002057
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002058- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002059
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002060Build
2061-----
2062
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002063- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2064 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2065
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002066C API
2067-----
2068
2069Windows
2070-------
2071
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002072- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2073 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2074
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002075- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2076
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002077Mac
2078---
2079
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002080- Various fixes to pimp.
2081
2082- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2083
2084- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2085 more problems than it solves.
2086
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002087
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002088What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2089=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002090
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002091*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2092
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002093Core and builtins
2094-----------------
2095
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002096- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2097 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2098
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002099- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2100 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002101 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002102
2103- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2104 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2105 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002106 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002107
2108- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2109 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002110
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002111- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2112 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2113 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2114
2115- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002116 770247.
2117
2118- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002119
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002120Extension modules
2121-----------------
2122
2123- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2124 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2125
2126- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2127
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002128- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2129
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002130- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2131 contained within the _strptime module.
2132
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002133- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2134 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2135
2136- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002137 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2138
2139- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2140 the find_class attribute, if present.
2141
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002142- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002143
2144 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2145 (SF bug 763298).
2146
2147 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002148 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2149 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2150 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002151
2152 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2153
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002154Library
2155-------
2156
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002157- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2158
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002159- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2160 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2161 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2162 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2163 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2164 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2165 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2166 or Tester().
2167
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002168- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2169 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2170 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2171 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2172 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2173 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2174 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2175 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2176 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002177
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002178 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002179
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002180- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2181 weren't before was an oversight.
2182
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002183- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2184 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2185
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002186- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2187 when there are no lines.
2188
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002189- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2190 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2191
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002192- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2193 to child processes.
2194
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002195- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2196
2197- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2198
2199- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2200 xmlrpclib.
2201
2202- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2203 responses.
2204
2205- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2206 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2207
2208- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2209 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2210 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2211
2212- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2213 used as patterns.
2214
2215- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2216 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2217 than Tk 8.3.
2218
2219- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2220
2221- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002222
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002223Tools/Demos
2224-----------
2225
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002226- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2227
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002228- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2229
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002230- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002231
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002232Build
2233-----
2234
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002235- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2236
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002237- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2238
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002239- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2240 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002241
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002242- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2243 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2244 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002245
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002246C API
2247-----
2248
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002249- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2250 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2251
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002252Windows
2253-------
2254
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002255- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2256 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2257 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2258 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2259 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2260 Python exception ::
2261
2262 thread.error: can't start new thread
2263
2264 is raised now.
2265
2266- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2267 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2268 instead of from DLL teardown.
2269
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002270Mac
2271---
2272
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002273- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002274 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002275 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2276 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2277 the executable in the bundle.
2278
2279- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002280
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002281- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2282
2283- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2284 on Panther.
2285
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002286What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2287================================
2288
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002289*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002290
2291Core and builtins
2292-----------------
2293
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002294- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2295 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2296 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2297 with the -i option.
2298
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002299- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2300 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2301
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002302- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2303 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2304
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002305- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2306 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2307 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2308 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2309 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2310 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2311 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2312 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2313 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2314 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2315 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2316 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2317 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002318
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002319- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2320 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2321 embedded in a lambda expression.
2322
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002323- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2324 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2325 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2326 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2327 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2328
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002329- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2330 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2331 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2332
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002333- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2334 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2335
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002336- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2337 It's writable again.
2338
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002339- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2340 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2341 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002342 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002343
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002344- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2345 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2346 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2347
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002348Extension modules
2349-----------------
2350
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002351- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2352 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2353
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002354- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2355 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2356 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2357 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2358
2359- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2360 collection.
2361
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002362- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2363 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2364 unique within a single program run.
2365
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002366- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2367 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2368
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002369- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2370 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2371
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002372- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2373 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002374
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002375- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2376
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002377- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2378 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2379
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002380- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2381 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2382 for many BSD-derived systems.
2383
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002384
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002385Library
2386-------
2387
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002388- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2389 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2390 primary ones:
2391
2392 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2393 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2394 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2395
2396 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2397 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2398 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2399 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2400 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2401 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2402
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002403- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2404 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2405 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2406 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2407 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2408 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2409 argument.
2410
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002411- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2412 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2413 in the archive.
2414
2415- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2416 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2417
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002418- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2419 569574).
2420
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002421- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2422 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2423 no more.
2424
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002425- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2426 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2427 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2428 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2429 code coverage.
2430
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002431- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2432 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2433 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002434 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2435 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002436
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002437- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2438 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2439 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002440 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002441
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002442- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2443
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002444- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2445 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2446 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2447 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2448
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002449- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2450 handling.
2451
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002452- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2453 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2454
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002455- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2456 in socket.py.
2457
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002458- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2459
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002460- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2461 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2462 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2463 opener with proxy support.
2464
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002465- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2466
2467- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2468
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002469Tools/Demos
2470-----------
2471
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002472- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2473
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002474- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2475
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002476- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2477 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002478
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002479- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2480 files.
2481
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002482Build
2483-----
2484
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002485- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002486 different root directory.
2487
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002488C API
2489-----
2490
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002491- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2492 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2493 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2494 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2495 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2496 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2497 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2498 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2499 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2500 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2501
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002502- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2503 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2504 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2505 from Python.
2506
2507
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002508New platforms
2509-------------
2510
2511None this time.
2512
2513Tests
2514-----
2515
2516- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2517 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2518
2519Windows
2520-------
2521
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002522- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2523
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002524- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2525 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2526 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2527 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2528 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2529 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2530 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2531 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2532 that's what it's for.
2533
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002534Mac
2535---
2536
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002537- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2538 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2539 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2540 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002541- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2542 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2543- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002544
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002545SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2546------------------------------------
2547
2548430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2549598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2550622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2551661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2552683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2553697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2554713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2555724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2556727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2557729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2558730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2559731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2560732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2561733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2562735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2563740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2564744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2565745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2566747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2567749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2568751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2569753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2570755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2571757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2572760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2573
2574
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002575What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2576================================
2577
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002578*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002579
2580Core and builtins
2581-----------------
2582
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002583- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2584 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2585
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002586- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2587 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2588 and cannot be strings).
2589
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002590- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2591 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2592 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2593 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2594
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002595- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2596 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2597 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2598 Python itself.
2599
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002600- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2601 the referenced object, if it has one.
2602
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002603- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2604 the thread started at
2605 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2606
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002607- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2608 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2609 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2610 placed on a list index.
2611
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002612- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2613 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2614 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2615 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2616
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002617- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2618 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2619 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2620 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2621 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2622 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2623 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2624
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002625- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2626 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2627 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2628 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2629 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2630
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002631- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2632 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002633
2634- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2635 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2636 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2637 #693195.)
2638
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002639- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2640 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002641
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002642- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002643 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002644 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2645 interpreter executions, would fail.
2646
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002647- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002648 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002649 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002650
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002651Extension modules
2652-----------------
2653
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002654- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2655 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2656 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2657 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2658
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002659- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2660 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2661
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002662- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2663 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2664 and Greg Chapman.)
2665
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002666- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2667 recursively.
2668
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002669- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002670 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2671 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2672 leaks.
2673
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002674- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2675
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002676- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2677 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2678 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2679 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2680 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2681 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2682 #705836.
2683
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002684- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002685 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2686
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002687- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2688 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2689 See SF bug #692416.
2690
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002691- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2692 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2693
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002694- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2695 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2696 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002697
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002698- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002699 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2700 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2701
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002702- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2703 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2704 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2705 timeouts to work properly.
2706
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002707Library
2708-------
2709
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002710- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2711 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2712 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2713 future release.
2714
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002715- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2716 for querying platform dependent features.
2717
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002718- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002719
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002720- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2721 pickle protocol versions.
2722
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002723- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2724 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2725 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2726
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002727- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2728
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002729- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2730 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2731 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2732 modules.
2733
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002734- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2735 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2736 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2737
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002738- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2739 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2740
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002741- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2742 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2743 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2744
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002745- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002746 MS Office extensions.
2747
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002748- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2749 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2750
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002751- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2752 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2753
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002754- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2755 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2756 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2757 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2758 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2759 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2760
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002761- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2762 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2763 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002764
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002765- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2766 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2767 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2768
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002769- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2770
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002771- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2772 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2773 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2774
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002775Tools/Demos
2776-----------
2777
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002778- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2779 See the module docstring for details.
2780
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002781Build
2782-----
2783
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002784- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2785 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002786
2787C API
2788-----
2789
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002790- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2791
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002792- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2793 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2794 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2795
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002796- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2797 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002798
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002799 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2800 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2801 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002802
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002803- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002804 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2805
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002806- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2807 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2808 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002809
2810New platforms
2811-------------
2812
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002813None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002814
2815Tests
2816-----
2817
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002818- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2819 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002820
2821Windows
2822-------
2823
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002824- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2825 function.
2826
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002827- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2828 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002829
2830Mac
2831---
2832
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002833- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2834 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002835
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002836- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2837 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002838
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002839- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2840 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2841 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002842
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002843- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002844 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2845 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002846
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002847- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2848 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002849
2850
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002851What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2852=================================
2853
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002854*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002855
2856Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002857-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002858
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002859- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2860 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2861 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2862
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002863- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2864 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2865 (SF patch #664376.)
2866
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002867- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2868 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2869 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2870 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2871 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2872 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002873 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002874
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002875- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2876 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2877 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2878 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002879 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002880
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002881- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2882 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2883 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2884 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2885 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2886 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2887 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2888 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2889 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2890 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2891 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2892
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002893- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2894 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2895 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2896 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2897 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2898 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2899
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002900- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2901 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2902
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002903- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2904 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2905 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2906 case.)
2907
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002908- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2909 passed as unicode strings.
2910
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002911- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2912 See SF bug #683467.
2913
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002914- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2915 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2916
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002917- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2918
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002919- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2920
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002921- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2922 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2923 arguments.
2924
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002925- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2926 See SF bug #667147.
2927
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002928- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002929 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002930 See SF bug #676155.
2931
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002932- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002933 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002934 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2935 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2936 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2937 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2938 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2939 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002940
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002941Extension modules
2942-----------------
2943
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002944- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2945 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2946 tp_as_number pointer.
2947
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002948- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2949 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2950 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2951 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2952 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2953
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002954- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2955
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002956- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2957
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002958- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002959 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002960 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2961 patch #678531.)
2962
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002963- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2964 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2965
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002966- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2967 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2968
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002969- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2970
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002971- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2972 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2973 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2974
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002975- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2976
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002977- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2978 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2979
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002980- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002981
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002982- datetime changes:
2983
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002984 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2985
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002986 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2987 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2988 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2989 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2990 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2991 now.
2992
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002993 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002994 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2995 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002996
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002997 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002998 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002999 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3000 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3001 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3002 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003003
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003004 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3005 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3006 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003007 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3008
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003009 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3010 by a later example coded by Guido.
3011
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003012 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003013 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3014 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3015 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003016 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3017 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3018
3019 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3020 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3021 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3022 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3023 tzinfo subclass instance.
3024
3025 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3026 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3027 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3028 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3029 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3030 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3031 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3032 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003033
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003034 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3035 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3036 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3037 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3038 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003039 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3040
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003041 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003042
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003043 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3044 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3045 as a naive datetime object.
3046
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003047 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3048 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3049 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3050
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003051 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3052 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3053 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3054 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3055 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3056 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3057 comparison.
3058
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003059 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3060 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3061 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3062 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003063 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003064
3065 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003066
3067 and ::
3068
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003069 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3070
3071 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3072 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3073 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3074 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3075
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003076 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3077 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3078 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3079 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3080 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3081
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003082 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3083 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003084 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3085 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003086
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003087Library
3088-------
3089
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003090- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3091 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3092
3093- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3094 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3095 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3096 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3097 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3098 See PEP 307 for details.
3099
3100- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3101 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3102
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003103- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3104 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003105 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003106 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3107 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003108 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003109
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003110- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3111 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3112
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003113- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3114 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3115 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3116
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003117- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3118
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003119- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3120 exception.
3121
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003122- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3123 class.
3124
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003125- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3126 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3127 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3128
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003129- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3130 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3131
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003132- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003133 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3134 See SF bug #659228.
3135
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003136- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3137 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3138 See SF patch #651082.
3139
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003140- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003141
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003142- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3143 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3144
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003145- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003146 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003147
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003148- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3149 DOS paths from other platforms.
3150
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003151Tools/Demos
3152-----------
3153
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003154- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3155 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3156 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3157 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3158 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3159 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3160 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3161 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3162 example:
3163
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003164 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3165 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003166
3167 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3168
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003169
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003170Build
3171-----
3172
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003173- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3174 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3175 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003176 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3177
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003178 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3179
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003180- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3181 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3182 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3183 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3184 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3185 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3186 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3187 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3188 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3189
3190- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3191 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3192 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3193 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3194
3195- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3196 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3197
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003198C API
3199-----
3200
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003201- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3202 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003203
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003204- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3205 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3206 tp_as_number pointer.
3207
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003208- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3209 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3210 (SF #681367)
3211
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003212- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3213 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3214 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3215 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003216
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003217Tests
3218-----
3219
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003220- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003221 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3222 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3223 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3224 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3225 pydoc.)
3226
3227- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3228
3229- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003230
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003231Windows
3232-------
3233
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003234- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3235 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3236 time).
3237
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003238- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3239 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3240
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003241- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3242 release without strong cryptography.
3243
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003244- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003245 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003246
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003247- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3248 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3249
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003250Mac
3251---
3252
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003253- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3254 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003255
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003256- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3257 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3258 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003259
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003260- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3261 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003262
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003263- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3264 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3265 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3266 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003267
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003268- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003269 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3270 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3271 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003272
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003273
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003274What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003275=================================
3276
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003277*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003278
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003279Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003280--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003281
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003282- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3283
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003284- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3285 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003286 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003287 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003288 a different meaning than before.
3289
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003290- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003291 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003292 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003293
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003294- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003295 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003296 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003297
3298- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3299 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3300 and deallocation.
3301
3302- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3303 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3304
3305- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3306 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3307 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3308 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3309 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3310
3311- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3312 now detected by the garbage collector.
3313
3314- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3315 [SF bug 519621]
3316
3317- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3318 identifier.
3319
3320- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3321 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3322 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3323 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3324 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3325 [SF bug 563060]
3326
3327- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3328 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3329 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3330 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3331 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3332
3333- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3334 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3335 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3336
3337- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3338
3339- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3340 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3341 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3342 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3343 state of the slots would be lost.)
3344
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003345Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003346-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003347
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003348- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003349 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3350 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3351 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3352 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003353 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3354 Jython 2.1.
3355
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003356- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003357 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003358 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3359 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3360 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3361 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3362 these, see PEP 302.
3363
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003364- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3365 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3366 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3367
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003368- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3369 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3370 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3371
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003372- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3373 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3374 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3375
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003376- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3377 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3378 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3379 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3380 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3381 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3382 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3383 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3384 releases or implementations.
3385
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003386- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003387 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3388 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003389
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003390- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3391 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3392
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003393- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3394 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3395 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3396
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003397- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3398 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3399
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003400- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3401 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003402 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3403 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003404
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003405- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3406 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3407 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3408 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3409 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3410
3411 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3412 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3413 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3414 pattern.
3415
3416 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3417 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3418 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3419 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3420
3421 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3422 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3423 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3424 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3425 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3426 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3427
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003428- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3429 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3430 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3431 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3432 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3433 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3434 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3435 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003436
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003437- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3438 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3439 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3440 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3441 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003442 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3443 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3444 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3445 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3446 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3447 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3448 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003449
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003450- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3451 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3452
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003453- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3454 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3455 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3456 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3457 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3458 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3459 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3460 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3461 to Zack Weinberg!
3462
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003463- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3464 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3465 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3466 type. This has been fixed now.
3467
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003468- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3469 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3470 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3471
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003472- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3473 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3474 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3475 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3476 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3477 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3478 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3479 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003480 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003481
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003482- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3483 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3484 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003485
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003486- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3487 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3488 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3489 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3490 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3491 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3492 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3493 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003494 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003495 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3496 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3497
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003498- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3499 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3500 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3501 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3502 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3503 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3504 this.)
3505
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003506- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3507 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003508 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003509 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003510 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3511 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003512 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3513 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003514
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003515- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3516 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3517 currently running.
3518
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003519- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3520 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3521 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3522 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3523
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003524- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3525 as directory names.
3526
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003527- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3528 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3529
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003530- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3531 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3532
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003533- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003534 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3535 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003536
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003537- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3538 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3539 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3540 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3541 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3542
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003543- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3544 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3545 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3546 removed.
3547
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003548- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3549 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3550 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3551
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003552- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3553 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3554 to __debug__.
3555
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003556- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3557 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3558 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3559
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003560- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3561 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3562 deprecated now.
3563
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003564- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3565 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3566 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003567
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003568- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3569 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3570 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3571 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3572 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003573
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003574- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3575 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3576
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003577- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3578 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3579 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003580 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003581 is backward compatible.
3582
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003583- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3584 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3585 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3586 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3587 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3588
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003589- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3590 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3591 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3592 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3593 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3594 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003595
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003596- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3597 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3598
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003599- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3600 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3601
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003602- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3603 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3604 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3605 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3606 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3607
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003608- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3609 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3610 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3611
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003612- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003613 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3614
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003615- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3616 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3617 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003618
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003619- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3620 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3621
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003622- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3623 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3624 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3625
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003626- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3627
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003628Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003629-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003630
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003631- Added three operators to the operator module:
3632 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3633 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3634 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3635
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003636- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3637
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003638- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3639 archives.
3640
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003641- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3642 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3643 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3644
3645 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3646
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003647- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3648 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3649 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003650 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003651
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003652- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3653 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3654 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3655 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003656 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3657 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3658 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3659 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003660
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003661- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3662 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003663
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003664- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3665
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003666- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3667 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3668
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003669- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3670 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3671 supported.
3672
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003673- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3674
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003675- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3676 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003677
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003678- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3679 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3680
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003681- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3682
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003683- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3684 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3685
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003686- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3687 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3688 functions but callable type objects.
3689
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003690- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003691 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003692 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003693
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003694- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3695 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003696
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003697- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3698 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003699
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003700- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3701 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3702 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3703 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3704
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003705- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3706 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003707
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003708- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3709 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3710 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3711 and __imul__.
3712
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003713- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003714 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3715 is called.
3716
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003717- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3718 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3719 interpreter was compiled.
3720
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003721- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3722 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3723 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003724 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003725 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3726 1, not 2.
3727
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003728- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3729 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3730 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3731 limit.
3732
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003733- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3734 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3735 bug #623464.
3736
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003737- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3738 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3739 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3740 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3741
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003742Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003743-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003744
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003745- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3746
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003747- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3748 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3749 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3750 with Python 2.3a2.
3751
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003752- os.path exposes getctime.
3753
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003754- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003755 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003756 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003757 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003758 unit tests of floating point results.
3759
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003760- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3761 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3762 has been increased.
3763
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003764- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3765 executed.
3766
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003767- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3768 postinstallation script.
3769
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003770- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3771 test the current module.
3772
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003773- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003774 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3775 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3776 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3777 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3778
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003779- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003780 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003781 Ward's Optik package.
3782
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003783- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3784 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3785 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3786 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3787
3788- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3789 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003790 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003791
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003792- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3793 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3794 shelf are binary pickles.
3795
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003796- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3797 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3798
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003799- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3800 modules are iterators now.
3801
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003802- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3803 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3804 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3805 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3806 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3807 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003808
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003809- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3810 with their entity value.
3811
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003812- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3813
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003814- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3815 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003816
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003817- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3818 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003819 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003820
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003821- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3822 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3823 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3824 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3825 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3826 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3827 main():
3828
3829 import locale
3830 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3831
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003832- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3833 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3834
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003835- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3836 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3837 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3838 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3839 to the new standard.
3840
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003841- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3842 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3843 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3844 an extension to the database.
3845
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003846- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3847 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3848 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3849 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003850 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003851
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003852- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003853 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003854
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003855- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3856 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3857 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3858 bounded integers.
3859
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003860- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3861 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3862 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3863 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3864 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3865 in existence.
3866
3867 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3868 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3869 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3870 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3871 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3872 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3873
3874 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3875 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3876 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3877 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3878
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003879- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3880 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3881 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3882
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003883- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3884
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003885- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3886 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3887 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3888 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3889
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003890- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3891 argument.
3892
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003893- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3894 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3895 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3896 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3897 [SF patch 560794].
3898
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003899- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3900 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3901 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003902 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3903 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3904 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003905
3906- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3907 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003908
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003909- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3910 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3911 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3912 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003913
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003914- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3915 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3916 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3917 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3918 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3919
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003920- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003921
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003922- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3923
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003924- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3925 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3926 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3927 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3928 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3929 identical to None.
3930
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003931- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3932 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3933 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3934 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3935 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3936 results now.
3937
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003938- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3939 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3940
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003941- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3942 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3943 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3944 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3945 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3946 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3947 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3948 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3949
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003950- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3951
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003952- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3953 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3954
3955- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3956 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3957 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3958 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3959 and other systems.
3960
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003961- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3962 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3963 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3964 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 +00003965 work well with these.
3966
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003967- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3968
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003969- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003970 connections.
3971
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003972- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3973 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3974 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3975
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003976- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3977 sets
3978
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003979- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3980 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3981 name.
3982
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003983- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3984 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3985 passed in.
3986
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003987- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003988 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003989 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3990 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003991
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003992- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3993
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003994- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3995
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003996- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3997 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3998 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3999
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004000- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4001 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4002 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4003 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004004 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004005
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004006- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004007 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004008 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004009
4010- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4011 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4012 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4013
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004014- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004015 the value of its expression argument.
4016
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004017- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4018 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4019 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4020
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004021- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4022 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4023 skipstone browser was included.
4024
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004025- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4026 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4027
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004028Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004029-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004030
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004031- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4032 names in addition to accepting file names.
4033
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004034- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4035 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4036 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4037 still used and useful.)
4038
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004039- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4040 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4041 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4042 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004043
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004044- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4045 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4046 the generated binary.
4047
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004048Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004049-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004050
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004051- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4052
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004053- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4054 except in the hands of experts.
4055
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004056- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004057 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4058 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4059 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004060
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004061- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4062 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4063 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4064 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4065 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4066 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4067 builds.
4068
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004069- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4070 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4071 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4072 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4073 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4074 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4075 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4076 new type.
4077
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004078- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004079
4080 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4081 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4082 positive infinities.
4083
4084 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4085 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4086 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4087 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4088 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4089 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4090 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4091
4092 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4093
4094 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4095
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004096- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4097 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4098 size of the executable.
4099
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004100- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4101 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4102 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4103 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004104
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004105- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4106
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004107- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4108 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4109 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004110
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004111- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4112 well as Unix.
4113
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004114- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4115 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4116 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4117 modules in the README file for details.
4118
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004119C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004120-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004121
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004122- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4123 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004124 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004125 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004126 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004127
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004128- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4129 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4130 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4131 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4132 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4133 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004134 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004135 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4136 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4137 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4138 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4139 aligned.)
4140
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004141- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4142 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4143 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4144
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004145- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4146 level.
4147
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004148- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4149 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4150 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4151 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4152 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4153
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004154- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4155 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4156 code.
4157
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004158- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4159 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4160 adjusting for negative indices.
4161
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004162- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4163 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4164 object.
4165
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004166- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4167 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4168 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4169
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004170- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4171 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004172
4173- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4174
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004175- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4176 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4177 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4178 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4179
4180- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4181
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004182- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004183
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004184- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004185 without going through the buffer API.
4186
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004187- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004188
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004189- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4190 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4191 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4192 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4193
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004194- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4195 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4196
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004197- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004198 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4199
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004200New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004201-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004202
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004203- OpenVMS is now supported.
4204
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004205- AtheOS is now supported.
4206
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004207- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4208
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004209- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4210
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004211Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004212-----
4213
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004214- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4215 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4216 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004217
4218Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004219-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004220
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004221- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4222 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4223 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4224 bugs.
4225 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004226 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004227 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4228 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004229 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004230
4231- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004232 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004233
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004234- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4235 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4236
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004237- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4238 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004239 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004240 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4241
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004242- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4243 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4244 use files" uninstall option).
4245
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004246- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4247
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004248- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4249 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4250
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004251- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4252 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4253 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4254
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004255- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4256 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4257 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4258 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4259 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004260 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4261 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4262 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004263
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004264- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004265 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004266 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4267 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4268 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4269 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4270 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4271 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4272 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4273 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4274 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4275 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4276 work around.
4277
4278- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4279 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4280 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4281 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4282 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4283 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4284 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4285 specified with O_CREAT too).
4286
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004287Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004288----
4289
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004290- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004291
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004292- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4293 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4294 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4295
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004296- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4297 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4298 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4299
4300- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4301 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4302 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4303 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4304 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4305 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4306 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4307 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004308
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004309- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4310 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4311 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004312
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004313- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4314 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4315 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4316 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4317 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004318
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004319- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4320 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4321 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004322
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004323- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4324 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004325
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004326- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4327 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4328 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4329 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4330 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004331
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004332- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4333 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4334 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4335
4336- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4337 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4338 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004339
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004340- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4341 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4342 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4343 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004344 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004345
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004346- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4347 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004348
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004349- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4350 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004351
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004352- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004353 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004354 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4355 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004356
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004357
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004358What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004359===============================
4360
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004361*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4362
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004363Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004364--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004365
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004366- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4367 with a custom metaclass.
4368
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004369Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004370-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004371
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004372- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4373 are proxies.
4374
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004375Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004376-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004377
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004378- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4379 very short strings.
4380
4381- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4382 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4383 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4384 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4385 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4386
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004387Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004388-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004389
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004390- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4391 close or delete time).
4392
4393- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4394 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4395
4396- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4397
4398- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004399 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004400
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004401Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004402-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004403
4404Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004405-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004406
4407C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004408-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004409
4410New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004411-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004412
4413Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004414-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004415
4416Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004417-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004418
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004419- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4420
4421- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4422 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4423
4424- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4425 deleted at process exit time.
4426
4427- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4428 in backslash.
4429
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004430Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004431----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004432
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004433- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4434 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4435 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4436
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004437
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004438What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004439===========================
4440
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004441*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4442
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004443Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004444--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004445
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004446- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4447 been extensively updated. See
4448
4449 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4450
4451 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4452
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004453- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4454 deleted!
4455
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004456- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4457 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4458 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4459 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4460 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4461
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004462- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4463
4464 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4465 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4466
4467 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4468 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4469 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4470 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4471 supported anyway.
4472
4473 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4474 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4475
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004476- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4477 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4478 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4479 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4480 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004481
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004482- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4483 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4484 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4485
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004486Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004487-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004488
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004489- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4490 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4491 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4492 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4493 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4494 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004495 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4496 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4497 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4498 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004499
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004500- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4501 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4502 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4503
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004504Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004505-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004506
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004507- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4508
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004509Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004510-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004511
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004512- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4513 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4514 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4515 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4516 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4517 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4518
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004519- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4520
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004521- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4522
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004523- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4524
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004525- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4526 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4527 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4528
4529- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4530
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004531Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004532-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004533
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004534- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4535 off a search on Google.
4536
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004537Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004538-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004539
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004540- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4541 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4542 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4543 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4544 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4545 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4546 other platforms should do likewise.
4547
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004548- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4549 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4550 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4551
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004552C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004553-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004554
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004555- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4556 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4557 producing key-value pairs.
4558
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004559- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004560 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004561 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4562 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4563 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4564 previously went unchallenged.
4565
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004566New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004567-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004568
4569Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004570-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004571
4572Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004573-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004574
4575Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004576----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004577
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004578- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4579 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004580
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004581- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4582 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4583 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4584 home.
4585
4586
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004587What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004588===========================
4589
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004590*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4591
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004592Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004593--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004594
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004595- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4596 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004597
4598 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004599 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004600
4601 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4602 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004603 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004604 This needs to be documented.
4605
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004606- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4607 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4608
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004609- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4610 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4611 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4612
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004613- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4614 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4615
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004616- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4617 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4618 class forbids it).
4619
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004620- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4621 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4622 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4623
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004624- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4625
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004626Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004627-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004628
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004629- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4630 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004631 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004632
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004633- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4634 (like 1 + '').
4635
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004636Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004637-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004638
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004639- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4640 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4641 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4642 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004643 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004644 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4645
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004646- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4647 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4648 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4649 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4650
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004651- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4652 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004653 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4654 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4655 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004656
4657- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4658 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004659
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004660- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4661 bytes on its input.
4662
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004663Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004664-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004665
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004666- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004667 convenience function.
4668
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004669- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4670 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4671 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004672 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4673 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4674 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4675 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4676 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4677 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004678
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004679- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4680 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4681 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4682 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4683
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004684- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4685 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4686 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4687
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004688- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4689 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4690 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4691 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4692
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004693- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4694 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004695 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004696 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4697 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4698 new -l and -e options.
4699
4700- statcache is now deprecated.
4701
4702- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4703 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004704 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004705 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4706 time properly taken into account.
4707
4708- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4709 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4710 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4711 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4712
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004713Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004714-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004715
4716Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004717-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004718
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004719- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4720 is built with libdb3 if available.
4721
4722- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4723
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004724C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004725-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004726
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004727- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4728 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4729 PySequence_Size().
4730
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004731- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4732
4733- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4734 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4735 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4736
4737- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4738 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4739
4740- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4741 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4742
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004743New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004744-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004745
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004746- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4747 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4748
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004749- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4750 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4751
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004752- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4753
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004754Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004755-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004756
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004757- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4758 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4759
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004760Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004761-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004762
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004763Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004764----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004765
4766- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4767 removed completely in the next release.
4768
4769- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4770 OSX.
4771
4772- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4773 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4774
4775- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4776
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004777
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004778What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004779===========================
4780
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004781*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4782
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004783Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004784--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004785
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004786- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004787 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004788 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004789 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4790 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004791 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4792 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004793 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4794 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004795
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004796- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4797 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4798
4799- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4800 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4801
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004802Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004803-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004804
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004805- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4806 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4807 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4808 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4809 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4810 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4811 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4812 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4813
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004814- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4815 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4816 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4817 example).
4818
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004819- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004820 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004821 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004822 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004823
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004824- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4825 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4826 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004827 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004828
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004829- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4830 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4831 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4832 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4833 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4834 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4835
4836 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4837
4838 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4839
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004840Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004841-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004842
4843- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4844
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004845- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4846
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004847- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4848 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004849
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004850- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4851 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4852 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4853 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4854 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4855 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004856 attributes.
4857
4858- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4859 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4860 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004861
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004862- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4863 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4864 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004865
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004866- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4867 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4868 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004869 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4870 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4871
4872- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4873 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004874
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004875Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004876-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004877
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004878- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4879 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4880
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004881- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4882 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4883 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4884 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4885
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004886- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4887 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4888 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4889 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4890
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004891 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4892 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4893 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4894 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4895 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4896 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4897 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4898 without losing information).
4899
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004900- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004901 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4902 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4903 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4904 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4905 module).
4906
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004907 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004908 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4909 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4910 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4911 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004912
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004913- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004914 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4915 encoding.
4916
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004917- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4918 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4919
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004920- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004921 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4922
4923- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4924 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4925 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4926 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4927
4928- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4929
4930- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4931 ON, and OFF.
4932
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004933- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4934 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4935
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004936Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004937-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004938
4939- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4940 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4941 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004942
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004943- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4944 been added: -X and -E.
4945
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004946Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004947-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004948
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004949- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4950 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4951
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004952C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004953-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004954
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004955- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4956 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4957 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4958 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4959 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4960
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004961- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4962 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4963 as long) arguments.
4964
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004965- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4966 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4967 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4968 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4969 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4970 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4971
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004972- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4973 input.
4974
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004975New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004976-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004977
4978Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004979-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004980
4981Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004982-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004983
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004984- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4985 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4986 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4987
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004988- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4989 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4990 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004991 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004992
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004993 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4994 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4995 import signal
4996 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004997
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004998 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004999 while 1:
5000 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005001 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005002 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5003 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5004 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5005 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005006
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005007
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005008What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5009===========================
5010
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005011*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5012
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005013Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005014--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005015
5016- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5017 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5018 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5019
5020- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5021 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5022 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5023 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5024 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5025 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5026 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005027
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005028- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005029 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005030 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5031 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5032 associate a docstring with a property.
5033
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005034- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5035 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5036 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5037 other built-in object types.
5038
5039- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5040 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5041 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5042 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5043 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5044
5045- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5046 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5047
5048- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5049 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005050 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005051 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5052 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5053 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5054 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5055 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5056
5057- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5058 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5059 class.
5060
5061- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5062 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5063 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5064 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5065
5066- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5067 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5068 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5069 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5070
5071- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5072 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5073
5074- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5075 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5076 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5077 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5078 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005079 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005080 with the same value as s.
5081
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005082- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5083
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005084Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005085----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005086
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005087- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5088
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005089- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5090 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5091 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5092 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5093 objects.
5094
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005095- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5096 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005097 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5098 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5099
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005100- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5101 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5102 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5103
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005104Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005105-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005106
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005107- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5108 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5109 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5110 by the instances.
5111
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005112- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5113 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5114 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5115
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005116- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5117 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5118 before the entire comparison is complete.
5119
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005120- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5121 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5122 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5123
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005124- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5125 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5126 getwriter().
5127
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005128- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5129 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5130
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005131- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005132 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5133 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5134
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005135- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5136 iterable object.
5137
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005138- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5139 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005140
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005141- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5142 authentication.
5143
5144- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5145 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005146
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005147- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005148 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5149 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5150 a sample driver.)
5151
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005152Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005153-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005154
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005155- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5156 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5157 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5158 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5159 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5160 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5161 kernel has large file support.
5162
5163- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5164 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5165 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5166 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5167 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5168
5169- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5170 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5171 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5172
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005173C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005174-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005175
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005176- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5177 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5178
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005179New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005180-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005181
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005182- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5183 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5184
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005185Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005186-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005187
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005188- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5189 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5190 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5191 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5192 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5193
5194- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5195 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5196 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5197 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5198
5199- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5200 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5201
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005202Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005203-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005204
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005205- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005206 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5207 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005208
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005209
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005210What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5211===========================
5212
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005213*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5214
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005215Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005216----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005217
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005218- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5219 big to represent as a C double.
5220
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005221- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5222 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5223 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5224 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5225 restriction).
5226
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005227- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5228 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5229 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5230 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5231 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5232
5233 >>> dir([])
5234 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5235 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5236 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5237 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5238 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5239 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5240 'reverse', 'sort']
5241
5242 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5243
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005244- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005245 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5246 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5247 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5248 OverflowError exception.
5249
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005250- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005251 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005252 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5253 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5254 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5255 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5256 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005257 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005258 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5259 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5260
5261 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5262 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5263 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5264 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005265
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005266- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005267 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5268 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5269 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5270 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5271 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5272 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5273 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5274 once it is created.
5275
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005276- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5277 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5278 (key, value) pairs.
5279
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005280- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005281 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5282 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5283
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005284- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5285 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5286 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5287 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5288 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005289
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005290- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005291 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5292 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5293
5294 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5295
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005296- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005297 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5298
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005299Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005300-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005301
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005302- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005303 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5304 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005305
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005306- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5307 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5308 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5309 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5310 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5311 in this area anymore).
5312
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005313- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5314 threading.Timer.
5315
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005316- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5317 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5318
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005319- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005320 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5321
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005322- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005323 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5324 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5325 converted to Python longs.
5326
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005327- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005328 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5329
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005330- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5331 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5332 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5333
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005334Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005335-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005336
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005337- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5338 division operators as per PEP 238.
5339
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005340Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005341-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005342
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005343- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5344 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5345 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5346 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5347
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005348C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005349-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005350
5351- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005352
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005353- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5354 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005355 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005356
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005357 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5358 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005359 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005360 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005361
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005362- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005363 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5364 module:
5365
5366 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005367
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005368 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5369 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005370
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005371 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5372 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005373
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005374 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5375
5376 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5377
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005378- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005379 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5380 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5381 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005382
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005383New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005384-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005385
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005386- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5387 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5388 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5389 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5390 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005391
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005392Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005393-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005394
5395Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005396-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005397
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005398- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5399 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5400 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5401 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005402 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5403 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5404 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5405 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5406 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005407
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005408- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005409 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5410
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005411
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005412What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5413===========================
5414
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005415*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5416
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005417Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005418-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005419
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005420- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5421 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5422
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005423- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5424 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5425 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005426
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005427- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5428 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5429 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5430 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005431
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005432- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5433
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005434- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005435
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005436Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005437-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005438
5439- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005440 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005441 the module docstring for details.
5442
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005443Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005444-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005445
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005446- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005447 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5448 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5449 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005450
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005451- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5452 Nick Mathewson.
5453
5454Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005455----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005456
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005457- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5458 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5459 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5460 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5461 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5462 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5463 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5464 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5465
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005466- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5467 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5468 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5469 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5470
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005471- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5472 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5473 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5474 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5475 come a long way).
5476
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005477- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5478 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5479 write filters for these warnings).
5480
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005481- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5482 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5483 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5484 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5485 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5486
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005487- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5488 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5489 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5490 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5491 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5492 older distribution.
5493
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005494Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005495-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005496
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005497- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5498 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005499 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005500
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005501- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5502 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5503 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5504
5505- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5506
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005507- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5508
5509- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5510
5511- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5512
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005513- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005514
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005515- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5516
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005517New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005518-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005519
5520C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005521-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005522
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005523- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5524 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5525 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5526 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5527 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5528 against buffer overruns.
5529
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005530- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005531 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5532 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005533 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5534 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5535 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5536
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005537- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5538 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5539 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5540 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5541 deprecated.
5542
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005543Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005544-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005545
5546- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5547 relevant is found.
5548
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005549
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005550What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005551===========================
5552
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005553*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5554
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005555Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005556----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005557
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005558- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5559 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5560 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5561 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5562 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5563 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5564 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5565 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005566 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005567 repaired.
5568
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005569- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005570 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005571 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5572 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5573 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5574 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5575 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5576 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5577 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5578 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5579
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005580- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5581 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5582 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5583 leading BMO character).
5584
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005585- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5586 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5587 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5588
5589 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5590 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5591 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005592
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005593 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5594 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5595 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5596 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5597 for various simple to use conversions.
5598
5599 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5600 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5601
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005602 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5603 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5604 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5605 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5606 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5607 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5608 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5609 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5610 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5611 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5612 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5613 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5614 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5615 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5616 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005617
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005618- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5619 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5620 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005621 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005622 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005623
5624 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005625 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5626 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5627 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5628 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5629 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005630 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5631 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005632
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005633 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5634 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5635 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005636 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005637
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005638- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5639 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5640 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5641 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5642 floating arithmetic,
5643
5644 x = 9007199254740992.0
5645 print long(x)
5646
5647 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5648 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5649 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5650 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5651 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5652 functions are of good quality).
5653
5654 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5655 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5656 algorithms to break.
5657
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005658- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5659 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5660 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5661 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5662 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5663 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5664 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5665 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5666 order.
5667
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005668- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5669 operation along the most common code paths.
5670
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005671- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5672 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5673
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005674- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5675 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5676 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5677 {}.update(UserDict())
5678
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005679- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5680 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5681 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5682 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5683 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5684 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5685 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5686 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5687
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005688- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005689 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005690
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005691 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005692 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5693 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005694 join() method of strings
5695 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005696 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5697 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005698 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005699 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005700
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005701- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5702 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5703
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005704- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5705 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5706
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005707- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5708 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5709 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5710 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5711
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005712- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5713 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005714 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005715 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5716 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005717
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005718- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5719
5720
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005721Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005722-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005723
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005724- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005725 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005726 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5727 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5728
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005729- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5730 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5731
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005732- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5733 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5734 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5735 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5736
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005737- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5738 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5739 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5740
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005741- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5742
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005743- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5744
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005745- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5746 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5747 that are still imported into string.py).
5748
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005749- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5750
5751- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5752 Now it does.
5753
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005754- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5755
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005756- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5757 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5758 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5759 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5760 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005761 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5762 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005763
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005764- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5765 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5766 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5767 'help(object)'.
5768
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005769Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005770-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005771
5772- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005773 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005774 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5775 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5776
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005777- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005778 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5779 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005780
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005781C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005782-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005783
5784- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5785 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005786
5787----
5788
5789**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**