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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
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000015- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
16 codes.
17
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000018- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
19 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
20 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
21
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000022- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
23 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
24
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000025- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000026 (fixes bug #1119418).
27
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +000028- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
29
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000030- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
31 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
32
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000033- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
34 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
35 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
36
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000037- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
38
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000039- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
40 reference counts in some error exit cases.
41
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000042- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
43 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
44 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
45 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
46 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
47 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
48 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
49 realloc.
50
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +000051- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
52 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
53
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +000054- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
55 like their int counterparts.
56
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +000057- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
58 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
59 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
60 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
61 for a longer write-up of the problem).
62
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +000063- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
64 serializing floats.
65
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +000066- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
67 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
68 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
69
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +000070- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
71 278.
72
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000073- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
74 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
75 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
76 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +000077 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000078 PyNumber_*().
79 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
80
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +000081- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
82 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
83 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
84 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
85
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +000086- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
87 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
88 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
89 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
90 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
91
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +000092- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
93 disabled caused a crash.
94
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000095- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
96 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
97
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000098- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000099 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
100
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000101- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
102
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000103- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000104 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
105 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
106 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000107
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000108- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
109
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000110- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
111 returning None.
112
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000113- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000114 ('\') with a specific error message.
115
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000116- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
117
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000118- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
119 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
120
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000121- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000122 an ferror() call.
123
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000124- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
125 list.sort().
126
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000127- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
128 (2+3) --> (5).
129
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000130- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
131
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000132- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
133 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000134
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000135- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
136 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
137 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
138
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000139- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
140 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
141 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
142
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000143Extension Modules
144-----------------
145
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000146- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
147 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000148
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000149- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
150
151- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000152 line without newlines.
153
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000154- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
155 on Windows.
156
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000157- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
158 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
159
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000160- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
161 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
162 for large or negative values.
163
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000164- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000165 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000166
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000167- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
168
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000169- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
170 if available on the platform.
171
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000172- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
173 available on the platform.
174
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000175- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
176 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
177
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000178- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
179
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000180- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
181 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
182 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
183
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000184- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
185
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000186- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
187 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
188
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000189- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000190 file size.
191
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000192- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
193
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000194- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
195 {remove_history,replace_history}
196
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000197- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
198 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000199
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000200- stat_float_times is now True.
201
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000202- array.array objects are now picklable.
203
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000204- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
205 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
206
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000207- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
208 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
209 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
210
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000211- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
212 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000213
214Library
215-------
216
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000217- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
218
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000219- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
220 functionality.
221
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000222- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
223
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000224- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
225 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
226
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000227- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
228 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
229 match the Content-Length header.
230
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000231- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
232
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000233- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
234 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
235 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
236
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000237- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
238
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000239- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
240
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000241- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
242 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
243
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000244- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
245 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
246 Tkdnd.
247
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000248- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
249 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
250
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000251- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
252 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
253
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000254- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000255 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
256
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000257- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
258 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
259
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000260- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
261 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
262
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000263- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000264 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000265
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000266- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
267
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000268- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
269 error messages.
270
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000271- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
272
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000273- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
274 Bug #1224621.
275
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000276- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
277 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
278 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
279 terminates by raising StopIteration.
280
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000281- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
282
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000283- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
284 component of the path.
285
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000286- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
287 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
288 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
289 class at all.
290
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000291- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
292 files to PyPI.
293
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000294- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
295 them to PyPI.
296
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000297- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
298 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
299 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
300 work as expected.
301
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000302- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
303 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
304
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000305- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000306 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
307
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000308- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
309
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000310- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
311 to build.
312
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000313- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
314 symbolic links on Windows.
315
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000316- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000317 profile.py if available.
318
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000319- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
320
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000321- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
322 in LWPCookieJar.
323
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000324- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
325
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000326- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
327
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000328- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
329
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000330- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
331
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000332- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
333
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000334- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
335
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000336- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
337
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000338- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
339
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000340- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
341 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
342 be exploited in various ways.
343
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000344- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
345
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000346- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
347
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000348- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
349
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000350- Enhancements to the csv module:
351
352 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000353 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000354 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000355 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
356 reporting.
357 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
358 dictates.
359 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000360 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000361 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000362 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
363 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000364 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
365 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000366 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000367 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
368 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
369 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
370 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
371 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
372 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
373 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
374 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
375 without first creating a dialect class.
376 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
377 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
378 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000379 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000380 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
381 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000382 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
383 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
384 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
385 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000386 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
387 This has been fixed.
388
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000389- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
390 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
391 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
392 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
393
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000394- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
395
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000396- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
397 (Bug #951915).
398
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000399- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
400 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
401 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000402 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000403
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000404- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
405
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000406- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
407 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
408
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000409- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
410
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000411- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
412
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000413- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
414
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000415- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
416
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000417- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
418
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000419- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
420 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
421 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
422
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000423- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000424 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000425
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000426- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
427 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
428 tokenizer with very long source lines.
429
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000430- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
431 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
432
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000433- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
434 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000435
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000436- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
437 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
438
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000439- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
440 correctly.
441
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000442- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
443 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
444 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
445 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
446 between two lines.
447
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000448- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
449 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
450 handlers.
451
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000452- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000453 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
454 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000455
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000456- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
457 considering it exactly like a '*'.
458
459
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000460Build
461-----
462
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000463- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
464 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
465
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000466- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
467 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
468
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000469- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
470 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
471 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000472 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000473
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000474- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
475 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
476 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
477
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000478- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
479
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000480- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
481 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
482
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000483- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
484 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
485 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
486 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
487 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
488 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
489 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
490 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
491
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000492- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
493 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
494 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
495 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
496
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000497
498C API
499-----
500
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000501- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
502
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000503- Removed PyRange_New().
504
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000505
506Tests
507-----
508
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000509- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000510
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000511
512Documentation
513-------------
514
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000515- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
516
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000517- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
518
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000519- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
520
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000521- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
522
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000523- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
524
525- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
526
527- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
528
529- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
530
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000531- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
532 Closes bug #1166582.
533
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000534- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
535 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
536 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
537
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000538Mac
539---
540
541
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000542New platforms
543-------------
544
545- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
546
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000547
548Tools/Demos
549-----------
550
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000551- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
552 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
553 source files that need an encoding declaration.
554 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
555
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000556- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
557
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000558- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000559
560
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000561What's New in Python 2.4 final?
562===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000563
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000564*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000565
566Core and builtins
567-----------------
568
569- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
570 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
571 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
572
573
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000574What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
575==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000576
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000577*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000578
579Core and builtins
580-----------------
581
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000582- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
583 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
584 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
585
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000586
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000587Library
588-------
589
590- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
591 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
592 raised is re-raised.
593
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000594- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
595 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
596
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000597- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
598 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
599 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
600 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
601 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
602 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
603 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
604 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
605 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
606 by the slice are recomputed now.
607
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000608- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000609
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000610Build
611-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000612
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000613- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
614 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
615 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000616
617C API
618-----
619
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000620- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
621
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000622
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000623What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
624================================
625
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000626*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000627
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000628License
629-------
630
631The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
632is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
633changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
634Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
635intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
636durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
637the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
638License::
639
640 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
641
642says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
643to Python 2.1.1.
644
645The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
646License Version 2.
647
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000648Core and builtins
649-----------------
650
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000651- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
652 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
653 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
654 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
655 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
656 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
657 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
658 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
659 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
660 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
661
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000662- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000663
664Extension Modules
665-----------------
666
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000667- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
668 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
669 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
670 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000671
672Library
673-------
674
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000675- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
676 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
677 returned.
678
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000679- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
680
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000681- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
682 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
683
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000684- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
685
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000686- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
687 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000688
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000689- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
690
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000691- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
692
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000693- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000694 the source code is updated and reloaded.
695
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000696Build
697-----
698
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000699- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000700
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000701What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
702================================
703
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000704*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000705
706Core and builtins
707-----------------
708
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000709- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000710 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
711
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000712- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
713 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
714 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
715 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
716
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000717- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
718 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
719
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000720- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
721 constant.
722
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000723- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
724 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
725 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
726 large), and to anomalies such as
727 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
728 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
729 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
730 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000731
732Extension modules
733-----------------
734
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000735- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
736 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000737 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
738 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
739 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000740
741Library
742-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000743
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000744- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000745 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000746 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
747 --swig-cpp.
748
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000749- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
750 it is set.
751
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000752- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000753
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000754- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
755 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
756 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
757 Closes bug #1039270.
758
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000759- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000760
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000761 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000762 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
763 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
764 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
765 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
766 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
767 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
768 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
769 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
770 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
771 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
772 + Updates to documentation.
773
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000774- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
775 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
776 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
777 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
778
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000779- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000780
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000781- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
782 applications should use the getmember function.
783
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000784- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
785
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000786- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
787 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
788 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
789 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
790 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
791 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
792 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
793 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
794 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
795
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000796- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
797 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000798 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000799
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000800- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
801 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
802 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
803 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
804 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
805 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
806 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
807 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000808
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000809- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
810 the new public features (of which there are many).
811
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000812- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000813 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
814 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
815 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
816 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000817 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000818
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000819- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
820
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000821- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
822 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
823 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
824 options.
825
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000826- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
827 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
828 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
829 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
830 conditions under which non-string values work.
831
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000832Build
833-----
834
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000835- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
836 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
837 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
838
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000839- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
840 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
841 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
842 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
843 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000844
845C API
846-----
847
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000848- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
849 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
850
851- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
852
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000853- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
854 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
855 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
856 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
857 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
858 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
859 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
860 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
861 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
862
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000863- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
864
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000865- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
866 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
867 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000868
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000869Tests
870-----
871
872- test__locale ported to unittest
873
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000874Mac
875---
876
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000877- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
878 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
879 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000880
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000881Tools/Demos
882-----------
883
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000884- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
885 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
886 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
887 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
888 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000889
890
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000891What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
892=================================
893
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000894*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000895
896Core and builtins
897-----------------
898
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000899- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000900 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
901
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000902- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
903 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
904 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
905 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
906 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
907 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
908 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
909 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000910 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
911 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
912 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
913 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
914 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000915
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000916- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
917 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
918 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
919 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
920 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
921
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000922- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
923
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000924- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
925 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
926
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000927- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
928 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
929 modified the list.
930
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000931- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
932 functions is now writable.
933
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000934- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
935 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
936 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
937 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
938
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000939- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
940 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
941 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
942 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
943 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000944
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000945- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
946 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
947
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000948Extension modules
949-----------------
950
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000951- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
952
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000953- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
954 data.
955
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000956- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
957 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
958 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
959 supposed to have been truncated away.
960
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000961- Added socket.socketpair().
962
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000963- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
964 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
965
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000966- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000967 versions of Python, have now been removed.
968
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000969Library
970-------
971
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000972- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000973 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000974
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000975- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
976 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
977
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000978- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
979 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
980
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000981- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
982
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000983- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
984 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000985
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000986- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
987 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
988
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000989- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
990
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000991- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
992
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000993- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
994
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000995- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
996 Percivall.
997
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000998- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
999 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1000
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001001- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1002 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1003 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001004 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001005
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001006- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1007 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1008 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1009 and exponent.
1010
1011- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1012
1013- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001014 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001015 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1016
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001017- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1018 to the readline module.
1019
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001020- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001021 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1022 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001023
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001024- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1025 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1026 contains symlinks.
1027
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001028- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1029 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1030
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001031- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1032 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1033 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1034
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001035- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1036 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1037 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1038 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1039 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1040 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1041 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1042 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1043 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1044 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1045 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1046 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1047 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1048
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001049- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1050
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001051Tools/Demos
1052-----------
1053
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001054- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1055 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1056
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001057- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1058
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001059Build
1060-----
1061
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001062- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1063 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1064 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1065 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1066 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1067 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1068 plans to do so.
1069
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001070- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1071 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1072
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001073- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1074 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1075
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001076- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1077 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1078
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001079- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1080 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1081
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001082- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1083 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1084
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001085C API
1086-----
1087
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001088..
1089
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001090Documentation
1091-------------
1092
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001093- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1094 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1095
1096- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1097 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1098 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001099
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001100New platforms
1101-------------
1102
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001103- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1104
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001105Tests
1106-----
1107
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001108..
1109
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001110Windows
1111-------
1112
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001113- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1114 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1115 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1116 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1117 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1118 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1119 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1120 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1121 the problem.
1122
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001123Mac
1124---
1125
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001126..
1127
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001128
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001129What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1130=================================
1131
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001132*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001133
1134Core and builtins
1135-----------------
1136
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001137- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1138 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1139 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1140 sensitive code.
1141
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001142- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001143 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001144
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001145 @staticmethod
1146 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001147
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001148 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001149
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001150- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1151 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1152 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1153 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1154 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1155 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1156 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1157 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1158 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1159 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1160 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1161
1162 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1163 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1164 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1165 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1166 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1167 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1168 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1169
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001170- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1171 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1172
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001173- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001174 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001175
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001176- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001177 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001178 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1179
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001180- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001181 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1182 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1183
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001184- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1185 types that support garbage collection.
1186
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001187- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1188
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001189- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1190 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1191 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1192 Jython.
1193
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001194- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1195
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001196- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1197 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1198
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001199- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1200 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1201 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001202
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001203- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1204 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1205 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1206
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001207Extension modules
1208-----------------
1209
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001210- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1211
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001212Library
1213-------
1214
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001215- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1216 TIS-620
1217
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001218- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1219 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1220 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1221 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1222 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1223 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1224 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1225 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1226 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1227 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1228
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001229- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1230
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001231- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1232 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1233 same as when the argument is omitted).
1234 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1235
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001236- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1237
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001238- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1239 schemes are offered.
1240
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001241- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1242
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001243- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1244 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1245 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1246
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001247- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1248
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001249- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1250 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1251
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001252- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1253 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1254 when dummy_threading is being used.
1255
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001256- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1257 from a tarfile.
1258
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001259- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001260 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001261
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001262- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1263 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1264 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1265 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1266
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001267- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1268 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1269
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001270- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1271 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1272 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1273 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1274 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1275 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1276 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1277 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1278 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1279 by some other method in progress).
1280
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001281- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1282 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1283 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001284
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001285- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1286
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001287- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1288 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1289 AM Kuchling.
1290
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001291- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1292 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1293 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1294
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001295- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1296 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1297 instead of unsigned.
1298
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001299- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001300 no longer part of the public API.
1301
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001302- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1303 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1304 string methods of the same name).
1305
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001306- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001307 SF patch 945642.
1308
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001309- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1310
1311 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1312
1313 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1314 DocTestSuites.
1315
1316- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1317 that provide thread-local data.
1318
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001319- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1320 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1321
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001322- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1323
1324- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1325 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1326 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1327
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001328- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1329
1330 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1331 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1332 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001333
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001334 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1335 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1336 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1337 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1338
1339 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1340 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1341
1342 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1343 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1344 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1345 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1346
1347 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1348 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1349 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1350 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1351 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1352
1353 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1354 wrapping help output.
1355
1356 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1357 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1358 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001359
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001360C API
1361-----
1362
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001363- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1364 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1365 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1366 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1367 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1368 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1369 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1370 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1371 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1372 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1373 its visible semantics have not changed.
1374
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001375- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1376 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1377
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001378Documentation
1379-------------
1380
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001381- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001382
1383 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001384 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001385
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001386 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001387
1388 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1389
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001390- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001391
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001392Tests
1393-----
1394
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001395- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001396 platforms that use the Makefile.
1397
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001398- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1399 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1400 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1401
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001402
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001403What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1404=================================
1405
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001406*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001407
1408Core and builtins
1409-----------------
1410
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001411- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1412 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1413 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1414 objects now (one object instead of three).
1415
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001416- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1417 Windows DLLs.
1418
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001419- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1420 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001421
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001422- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1423 a new .pyc magic.
1424
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001425- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1426 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1427 be there.
1428
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001429- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1430 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1431 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1432
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001433- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1434 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1435 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1436
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001437- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1438
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001439- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1440 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1441 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001442
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001443- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1444 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1445
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001446- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1447
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001448- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001449 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001450
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001451- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1452
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001453- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1454
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001455- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1456 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1457
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001458- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1459 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1460 Fixes bug #858016 .
1461
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001462- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1463 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1464 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1465
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001466- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1467 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1468 improves their performance (about 35%).
1469
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001470- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1471 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1472 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1473
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001474- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1475 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1476 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1477 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1478
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001479- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1480 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001481 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001482 length is not known).
1483
1484- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1485 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001486 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1487 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001488 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1489
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001490- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1491 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1492
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001493- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1494 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1495 keyword arguments.
1496
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001497- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1498 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1499 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1500
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001501- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1502 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1503 cases.
1504
1505- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1506 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1507 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1508 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1509 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1510 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1511 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1512 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1513 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1514 a release build.
1515
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001516- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1517 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1518
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001519- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001520 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001521
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001522- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1523 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1524 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1525 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1526 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1527 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1528 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1529 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1530 destroyed.
1531
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001532- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1533 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1534 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1535 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1536 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1537 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1538 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1539 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1540
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001541- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1542 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1543 character other than a space.
1544
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001545- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1546 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1547 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1548 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1549 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1550 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1551 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1552 attributes with the same name.
1553
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001554- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1555 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1556 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1557 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1558 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1559 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1560 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1561 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1562 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1563 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1564 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1565 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1566 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1567 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001568
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001569- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1570 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1571 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1572 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1573 This has been repaired.
1574
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001575- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1576
1577- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1578
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001579- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1580 over a sequence.
1581
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001582- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001583 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001584
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001585- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1586
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001587- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1588 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1589 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1590 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1591 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1592 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1593 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1594 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1595
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001596- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1597 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1598 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1599
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001600- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1601 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1602 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1603 freelist.
1604
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001605- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1606 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1607
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001608- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1609 number.
1610
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001611- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1612 a TypeError exception.
1613
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001614- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1615 820195.
1616
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001617- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1618 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1619 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1620
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001621- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001622 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1623 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001624
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001625- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1626 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1627 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1628
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001629- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1630 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001631 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001632
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001633- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001634 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1635 the first call.
1636
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001637
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001638Extension modules
1639-----------------
1640
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001641- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1642 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1643
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001644- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1645 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1646 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1647 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1648 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1649 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1650 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001651
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001652- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1653
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001654- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1655
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001656- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1657 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1658
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001659- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1660 fewer false positives.
1661
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001662- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1663 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1664
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001665- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001666 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1667
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001668- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001669 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001670 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001671 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1672 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001673
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001674- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1675 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1676 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1677 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1678
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001679- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1680 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1681 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1682 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1683 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1684 #897625.
1685
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001686- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1687 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1688
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001689- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1690 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1691 and pops on either side of the deque.
1692
1693- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1694 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1695
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001696- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1697 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1698 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1699 other functions that expect a function argument.
1700
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001701- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1702
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001703- os.getsid was added.
1704
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001705- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1706 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1707 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1708
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001709- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1710
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001711- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1712
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001713- readline.clear_history was added.
1714
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001715- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1716
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001717- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1718
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001719- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1720
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001721- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1722
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001723- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1724
1725- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1726
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001727- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1728
1729- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1730
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001731- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1732 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1733 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1734
1735- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1736 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1737 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1738 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1739 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1740 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1741 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1742
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001743- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1744 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1745 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1746 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001747
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001748- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001749 iterators from a single iterable.
1750
1751- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1752 of raising a TypeError exception.
1753
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001754- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1755 as parameter.
1756
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001757Library
1758-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001759
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001760- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1761
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001762- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1763 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1764 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001765
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001766- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1767 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1768 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001769
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001770- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001771
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001772- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1773 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001774
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001775- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1776 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1777
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001778- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1779
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001780- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001781 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001782
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001783- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001784 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001785
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001786- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1787
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001788- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1789 on cygwin and mingw32.
1790
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001791- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1792
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001793- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1794 module.
1795
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001796- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1797 installation scheme for all platforms.
1798
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001799- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001800 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001801
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001802- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1803 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1804 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1805
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001806- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1807 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1808 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1809
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001810- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1811
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001812- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1813
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001814- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1815 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1816
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001817- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1818 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1819 type pattern with the same value exists.
1820
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001821- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1822 when run from the command prompt).
1823
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001824- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1825 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1826
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001827- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1828 default sort).
1829
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001830- Added global runctx function to profile module
1831
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001832- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1833
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001834- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1835
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001836- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1837
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001838- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001839 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1840 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1841 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1842 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1843 accordingly.
1844
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001845- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1846 decoding standards.
1847
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001848- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1849 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1850 called for all requests.
1851
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001852- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1853 they are passed to the compiler.
1854
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001855- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1856 indent, width and depth.
1857
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001858- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1859 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1860
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001861- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1862 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1863
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001864- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1865
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001866- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1867
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001868- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1869
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001870- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1871 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1872
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001873- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001874 for better performance.
1875
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001876- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001877
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001878- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1879 a string).
1880
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001881- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1882
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001883- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1884
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001885- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1886
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001887- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1888
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001889- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1890 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1891 list of fieldnames.
1892
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001893- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1894 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1895
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001896- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1897
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001898- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1899 empty lists.
1900
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001901- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1902 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1903 and shelves.
1904
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001905- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1906 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1907
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001908- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001909 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1910 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001911
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001912- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1913 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001914 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001915
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001916- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001917 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1918 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1919
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001920- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1921 and removed in Py2.4.
1922
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001923- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1924
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001925- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1926
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001927Tools/Demos
1928-----------
1929
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001930- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1931 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1932
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001933- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1934
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001935- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1936 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1937 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1938 destination in situations where both files are given.
1939
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001940- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1941 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1942 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1943 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1944
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001945- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1946
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001947- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1948 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1949 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1950 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1951 now.
1952
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001953- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1954 in effect
1955
1956- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1957 C-c C-h
1958
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001959- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1960 -d option was given.
1961
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001962Build
1963-----
1964
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001965- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1966 build under OS X.
1967
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001968- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1969 --enable-profiling.
1970
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001971- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1972 is configured --with-tsc.
1973
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001974- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1975 on AMD64.
1976
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001977- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1978 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1979
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001980- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1981 removed.
1982
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001983- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1984 supported (see PEP 11).
1985
1986- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1987
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001988- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1989
1990- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1991 (see PEP 11).
1992
1993- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1994 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1995
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001996C API
1997-----
1998
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001999- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2000 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2001 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2002
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002003- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2004 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2005 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2006 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2007
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002008- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2009 generator objects.
2010
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002011- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2012 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002013 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2014 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002015
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002016- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2017 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2018
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002019- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2020 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2021 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2022 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2023 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2024
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002025- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2026 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2027 about 10% faster.
2028
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002029- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2030 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2031
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002032- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2033 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2034 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2035 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2036
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002037Windows
2038-------
2039
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002040- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2041 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2042 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2043 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2044
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002045- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2046 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2047 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2048
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002049
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002050What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2051===============================
2052
2053*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2054
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002055IDLE
2056----
2057
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002058- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2059 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2060 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2061 context-menu actions.
2062
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002063- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2064 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2065 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2066 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2067 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2068 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2069 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2070 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2071 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2072
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002073
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002074What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2075=============================================
2076
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002077*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002078
2079Core and builtins
2080-----------------
2081
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002082- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002083 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002084 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2085
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002086Extension modules
2087-----------------
2088
2089- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2090 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2091 than once. This has been fixed.
2092
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002093- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2094 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2095 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2096 call.
2097
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002098- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2099
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002100Library
2101-------
2102
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002103- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2104 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2105
2106- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2107 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2108 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2109 restored.
2110
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002111IDLE
2112----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002113
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002114- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002115
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002116Build
2117-----
2118
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002119- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2120 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2121
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002122C API
2123-----
2124
2125Windows
2126-------
2127
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002128- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2129 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2130
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002131- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2132
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002133Mac
2134---
2135
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002136- Various fixes to pimp.
2137
2138- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2139
2140- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2141 more problems than it solves.
2142
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002143
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002144What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2145=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002146
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002147*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2148
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002149Core and builtins
2150-----------------
2151
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002152- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2153 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2154
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002155- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2156 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002157 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002158
2159- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2160 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2161 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002162 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002163
2164- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2165 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002166
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002167- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2168 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2169 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2170
2171- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002172 770247.
2173
2174- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002175
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002176Extension modules
2177-----------------
2178
2179- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2180 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2181
2182- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2183
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002184- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2185
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002186- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2187 contained within the _strptime module.
2188
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002189- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2190 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2191
2192- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002193 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2194
2195- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2196 the find_class attribute, if present.
2197
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002198- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002199
2200 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2201 (SF bug 763298).
2202
2203 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002204 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2205 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2206 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002207
2208 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2209
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002210Library
2211-------
2212
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002213- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2214
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002215- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2216 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2217 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2218 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2219 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2220 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2221 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2222 or Tester().
2223
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002224- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2225 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2226 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2227 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2228 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2229 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2230 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2231 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2232 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002233
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002234 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002235
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002236- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2237 weren't before was an oversight.
2238
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002239- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2240 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2241
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002242- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2243 when there are no lines.
2244
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002245- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2246 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2247
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002248- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2249 to child processes.
2250
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002251- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2252
2253- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2254
2255- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2256 xmlrpclib.
2257
2258- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2259 responses.
2260
2261- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2262 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2263
2264- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2265 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2266 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2267
2268- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2269 used as patterns.
2270
2271- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2272 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2273 than Tk 8.3.
2274
2275- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2276
2277- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002278
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002279Tools/Demos
2280-----------
2281
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002282- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2283
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002284- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2285
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002286- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002287
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002288Build
2289-----
2290
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002291- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2292
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002293- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2294
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002295- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2296 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002297
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002298- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2299 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2300 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002301
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002302C API
2303-----
2304
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002305- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2306 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2307
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002308Windows
2309-------
2310
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002311- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2312 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2313 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2314 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2315 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2316 Python exception ::
2317
2318 thread.error: can't start new thread
2319
2320 is raised now.
2321
2322- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2323 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2324 instead of from DLL teardown.
2325
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002326Mac
2327---
2328
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002329- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002330 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002331 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2332 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2333 the executable in the bundle.
2334
2335- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002336
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002337- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2338
2339- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2340 on Panther.
2341
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002342What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2343================================
2344
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002345*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002346
2347Core and builtins
2348-----------------
2349
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002350- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2351 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2352 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2353 with the -i option.
2354
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002355- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2356 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2357
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002358- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2359 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2360
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002361- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2362 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2363 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2364 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2365 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2366 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2367 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2368 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2369 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2370 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2371 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2372 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2373 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002374
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002375- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2376 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2377 embedded in a lambda expression.
2378
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002379- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2380 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2381 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2382 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2383 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2384
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002385- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2386 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2387 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2388
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002389- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2390 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2391
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002392- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2393 It's writable again.
2394
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002395- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2396 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2397 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002398 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002399
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002400- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2401 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2402 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2403
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002404Extension modules
2405-----------------
2406
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002407- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2408 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2409
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002410- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2411 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2412 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2413 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2414
2415- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2416 collection.
2417
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002418- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2419 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2420 unique within a single program run.
2421
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002422- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2423 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2424
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002425- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2426 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2427
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002428- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2429 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002430
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002431- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2432
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002433- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2434 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2435
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002436- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2437 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2438 for many BSD-derived systems.
2439
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002440
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002441Library
2442-------
2443
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002444- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2445 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2446 primary ones:
2447
2448 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2449 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2450 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2451
2452 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2453 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2454 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2455 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2456 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2457 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2458
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002459- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2460 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2461 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2462 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2463 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2464 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2465 argument.
2466
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002467- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2468 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2469 in the archive.
2470
2471- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2472 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2473
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002474- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2475 569574).
2476
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002477- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2478 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2479 no more.
2480
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002481- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2482 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2483 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2484 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2485 code coverage.
2486
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002487- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2488 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2489 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002490 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2491 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002492
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002493- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2494 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2495 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002496 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002497
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002498- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2499
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002500- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2501 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2502 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2503 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2504
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002505- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2506 handling.
2507
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002508- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2509 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2510
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002511- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2512 in socket.py.
2513
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002514- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2515
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002516- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2517 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2518 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2519 opener with proxy support.
2520
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002521- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2522
2523- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2524
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002525Tools/Demos
2526-----------
2527
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002528- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2529
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002530- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2531
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002532- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2533 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002534
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002535- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2536 files.
2537
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002538Build
2539-----
2540
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002541- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002542 different root directory.
2543
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002544C API
2545-----
2546
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002547- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2548 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2549 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2550 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2551 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2552 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2553 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2554 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2555 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2556 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2557
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002558- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2559 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2560 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2561 from Python.
2562
2563
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002564New platforms
2565-------------
2566
2567None this time.
2568
2569Tests
2570-----
2571
2572- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2573 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2574
2575Windows
2576-------
2577
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002578- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2579
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002580- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2581 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2582 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2583 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2584 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2585 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2586 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2587 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2588 that's what it's for.
2589
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002590Mac
2591---
2592
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002593- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2594 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2595 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2596 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002597- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2598 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2599- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002600
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002601SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2602------------------------------------
2603
2604430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2605598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2606622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2607661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2608683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2609697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2610713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2611724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2612727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2613729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2614730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2615731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2616732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2617733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2618735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2619740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2620744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2621745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2622747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2623749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2624751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2625753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2626755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2627757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2628760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2629
2630
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002631What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2632================================
2633
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002634*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002635
2636Core and builtins
2637-----------------
2638
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002639- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2640 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2641
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002642- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2643 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2644 and cannot be strings).
2645
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002646- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2647 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2648 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2649 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2650
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002651- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2652 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2653 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2654 Python itself.
2655
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002656- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2657 the referenced object, if it has one.
2658
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002659- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2660 the thread started at
2661 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2662
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002663- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2664 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2665 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2666 placed on a list index.
2667
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002668- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2669 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2670 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2671 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2672
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002673- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2674 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2675 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2676 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2677 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2678 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2679 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2680
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002681- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2682 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2683 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2684 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2685 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2686
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002687- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2688 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002689
2690- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2691 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2692 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2693 #693195.)
2694
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002695- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2696 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002697
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002698- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002699 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002700 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2701 interpreter executions, would fail.
2702
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002703- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002704 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002705 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002706
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002707Extension modules
2708-----------------
2709
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002710- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2711 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2712 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2713 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2714
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002715- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2716 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2717
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002718- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2719 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2720 and Greg Chapman.)
2721
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002722- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2723 recursively.
2724
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002725- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002726 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2727 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2728 leaks.
2729
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002730- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2731
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002732- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2733 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2734 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2735 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2736 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2737 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2738 #705836.
2739
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002740- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002741 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2742
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002743- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2744 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2745 See SF bug #692416.
2746
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002747- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2748 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2749
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002750- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2751 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2752 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002753
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002754- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002755 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2756 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2757
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002758- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2759 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2760 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2761 timeouts to work properly.
2762
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002763Library
2764-------
2765
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002766- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2767 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2768 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2769 future release.
2770
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002771- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2772 for querying platform dependent features.
2773
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002774- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002775
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002776- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2777 pickle protocol versions.
2778
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002779- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2780 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2781 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2782
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002783- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2784
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002785- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2786 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2787 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2788 modules.
2789
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002790- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2791 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2792 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2793
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002794- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2795 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2796
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002797- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2798 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2799 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2800
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002801- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002802 MS Office extensions.
2803
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002804- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2805 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2806
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002807- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2808 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2809
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002810- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2811 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2812 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2813 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2814 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2815 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2816
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002817- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2818 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2819 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002820
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002821- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2822 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2823 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2824
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002825- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2826
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002827- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2828 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2829 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2830
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002831Tools/Demos
2832-----------
2833
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002834- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2835 See the module docstring for details.
2836
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002837Build
2838-----
2839
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002840- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2841 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002842
2843C API
2844-----
2845
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002846- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2847
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002848- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2849 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2850 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2851
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002852- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2853 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002854
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002855 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2856 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2857 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002858
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002859- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002860 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2861
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002862- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2863 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2864 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002865
2866New platforms
2867-------------
2868
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002869None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002870
2871Tests
2872-----
2873
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002874- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2875 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002876
2877Windows
2878-------
2879
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002880- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2881 function.
2882
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002883- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2884 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002885
2886Mac
2887---
2888
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002889- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2890 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002891
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002892- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2893 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002894
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002895- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2896 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2897 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002898
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002899- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002900 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2901 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002902
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002903- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2904 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002905
2906
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002907What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2908=================================
2909
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002910*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002911
2912Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002913-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002914
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002915- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2916 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2917 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2918
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002919- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2920 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2921 (SF patch #664376.)
2922
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002923- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2924 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2925 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2926 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2927 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2928 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002929 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002930
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002931- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2932 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2933 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2934 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002935 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002936
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002937- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2938 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2939 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2940 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2941 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2942 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2943 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2944 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2945 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2946 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2947 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2948
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002949- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2950 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2951 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2952 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2953 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2954 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2955
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002956- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2957 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2958
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002959- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2960 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2961 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2962 case.)
2963
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002964- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2965 passed as unicode strings.
2966
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002967- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2968 See SF bug #683467.
2969
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002970- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2971 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2972
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002973- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2974
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002975- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2976
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002977- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2978 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2979 arguments.
2980
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002981- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2982 See SF bug #667147.
2983
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002984- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002985 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002986 See SF bug #676155.
2987
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002988- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002989 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002990 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2991 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2992 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2993 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2994 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2995 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002996
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002997Extension modules
2998-----------------
2999
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003000- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3001 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3002 tp_as_number pointer.
3003
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003004- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3005 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3006 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3007 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3008 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3009
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003010- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3011
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003012- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3013
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003014- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003015 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003016 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3017 patch #678531.)
3018
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003019- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3020 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3021
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003022- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3023 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3024
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003025- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3026
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003027- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3028 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3029 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3030
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003031- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3032
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003033- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3034 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3035
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003036- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003037
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003038- datetime changes:
3039
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003040 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3041
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003042 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3043 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3044 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3045 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3046 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3047 now.
3048
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003049 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003050 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3051 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003052
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003053 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003054 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003055 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3056 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3057 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3058 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003059
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003060 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3061 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3062 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003063 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3064
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003065 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3066 by a later example coded by Guido.
3067
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003068 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003069 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3070 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3071 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003072 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3073 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3074
3075 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3076 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3077 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3078 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3079 tzinfo subclass instance.
3080
3081 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3082 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3083 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3084 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3085 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3086 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3087 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3088 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003089
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003090 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3091 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3092 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3093 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3094 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003095 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3096
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003097 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003098
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003099 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3100 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3101 as a naive datetime object.
3102
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003103 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3104 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3105 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3106
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003107 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3108 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3109 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3110 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3111 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3112 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3113 comparison.
3114
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003115 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3116 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3117 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3118 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003119 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003120
3121 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003122
3123 and ::
3124
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003125 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3126
3127 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3128 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3129 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3130 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3131
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003132 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3133 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3134 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3135 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3136 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3137
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003138 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3139 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003140 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3141 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003142
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003143Library
3144-------
3145
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003146- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3147 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3148
3149- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3150 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3151 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3152 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3153 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3154 See PEP 307 for details.
3155
3156- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3157 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3158
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003159- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3160 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003161 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003162 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3163 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003164 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003165
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003166- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3167 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3168
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003169- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3170 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3171 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3172
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003173- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3174
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003175- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3176 exception.
3177
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003178- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3179 class.
3180
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003181- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3182 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3183 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3184
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003185- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3186 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3187
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003188- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003189 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3190 See SF bug #659228.
3191
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003192- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3193 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3194 See SF patch #651082.
3195
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003196- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003197
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003198- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3199 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3200
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003201- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003202 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003203
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003204- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3205 DOS paths from other platforms.
3206
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003207Tools/Demos
3208-----------
3209
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003210- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3211 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3212 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3213 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3214 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3215 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3216 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3217 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3218 example:
3219
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003220 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3221 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003222
3223 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3224
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003225
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003226Build
3227-----
3228
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003229- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3230 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3231 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003232 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3233
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003234 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3235
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003236- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3237 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3238 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3239 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3240 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3241 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3242 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3243 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3244 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3245
3246- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3247 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3248 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3249 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3250
3251- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3252 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3253
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003254C API
3255-----
3256
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003257- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3258 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003259
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003260- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3261 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3262 tp_as_number pointer.
3263
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003264- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3265 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3266 (SF #681367)
3267
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003268- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3269 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3270 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3271 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003272
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003273Tests
3274-----
3275
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003276- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003277 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3278 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3279 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3280 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3281 pydoc.)
3282
3283- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3284
3285- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003286
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003287Windows
3288-------
3289
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003290- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3291 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3292 time).
3293
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003294- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3295 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3296
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003297- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3298 release without strong cryptography.
3299
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003300- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003301 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003302
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003303- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3304 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3305
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003306Mac
3307---
3308
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003309- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3310 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003311
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003312- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3313 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3314 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003315
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003316- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3317 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003318
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003319- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3320 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3321 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3322 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003323
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003324- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003325 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3326 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3327 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003328
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003329
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003330What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003331=================================
3332
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003333*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003334
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003335Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003336--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003337
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003338- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3339
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003340- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3341 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003342 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003343 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003344 a different meaning than before.
3345
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003346- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003347 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003348 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003349
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003350- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003351 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003352 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003353
3354- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3355 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3356 and deallocation.
3357
3358- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3359 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3360
3361- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3362 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3363 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3364 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3365 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3366
3367- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3368 now detected by the garbage collector.
3369
3370- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3371 [SF bug 519621]
3372
3373- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3374 identifier.
3375
3376- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3377 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3378 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3379 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3380 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3381 [SF bug 563060]
3382
3383- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3384 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3385 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3386 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3387 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3388
3389- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3390 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3391 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3392
3393- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3394
3395- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3396 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3397 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3398 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3399 state of the slots would be lost.)
3400
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003401Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003402-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003403
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003404- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003405 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3406 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3407 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3408 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003409 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3410 Jython 2.1.
3411
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003412- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003413 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003414 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3415 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3416 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3417 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3418 these, see PEP 302.
3419
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003420- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3421 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3422 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3423
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003424- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3425 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3426 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3427
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003428- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3429 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3430 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3431
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003432- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3433 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3434 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3435 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3436 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3437 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3438 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3439 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3440 releases or implementations.
3441
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003442- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003443 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3444 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003445
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003446- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3447 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3448
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003449- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3450 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3451 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3452
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003453- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3454 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3455
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003456- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3457 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003458 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3459 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003460
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003461- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3462 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3463 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3464 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3465 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3466
3467 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3468 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3469 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3470 pattern.
3471
3472 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3473 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3474 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3475 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3476
3477 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3478 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3479 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3480 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3481 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3482 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3483
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003484- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3485 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3486 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3487 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3488 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3489 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3490 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3491 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003492
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003493- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3494 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3495 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3496 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3497 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003498 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3499 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3500 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3501 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3502 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3503 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3504 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003505
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003506- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3507 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3508
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003509- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3510 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3511 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3512 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3513 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3514 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3515 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3516 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3517 to Zack Weinberg!
3518
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003519- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3520 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3521 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3522 type. This has been fixed now.
3523
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003524- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3525 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3526 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3527
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003528- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3529 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3530 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3531 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3532 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3533 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3534 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3535 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003536 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003537
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003538- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3539 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3540 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003541
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003542- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3543 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3544 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3545 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3546 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3547 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3548 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3549 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003550 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003551 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3552 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3553
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003554- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3555 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3556 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3557 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3558 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3559 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3560 this.)
3561
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003562- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3563 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003564 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003565 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003566 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3567 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003568 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3569 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003570
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003571- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3572 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3573 currently running.
3574
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003575- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3576 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3577 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3578 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3579
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003580- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3581 as directory names.
3582
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003583- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3584 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3585
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003586- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3587 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3588
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003589- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003590 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3591 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003592
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003593- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3594 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3595 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3596 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3597 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3598
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003599- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3600 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3601 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3602 removed.
3603
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003604- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3605 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3606 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3607
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003608- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3609 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3610 to __debug__.
3611
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003612- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3613 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3614 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3615
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003616- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3617 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3618 deprecated now.
3619
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003620- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3621 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3622 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003623
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003624- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3625 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3626 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3627 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3628 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003629
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003630- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3631 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3632
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003633- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3634 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3635 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003636 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003637 is backward compatible.
3638
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003639- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3640 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3641 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3642 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3643 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3644
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003645- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3646 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3647 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3648 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3649 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3650 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003651
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003652- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3653 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3654
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003655- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3656 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3657
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003658- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3659 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3660 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3661 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3662 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3663
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003664- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3665 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3666 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3667
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003668- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003669 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3670
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003671- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3672 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3673 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003674
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003675- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3676 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3677
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003678- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3679 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3680 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3681
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003682- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3683
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003684Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003685-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003686
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003687- Added three operators to the operator module:
3688 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3689 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3690 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3691
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003692- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3693
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003694- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3695 archives.
3696
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003697- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3698 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3699 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3700
3701 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3702
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003703- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3704 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3705 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003706 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003707
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003708- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3709 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3710 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3711 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003712 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3713 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3714 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3715 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003716
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003717- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3718 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003719
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003720- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3721
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003722- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3723 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3724
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003725- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3726 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3727 supported.
3728
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003729- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3730
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003731- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3732 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003733
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003734- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3735 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3736
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003737- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3738
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003739- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3740 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3741
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003742- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3743 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3744 functions but callable type objects.
3745
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003746- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003747 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003748 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003749
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003750- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3751 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003752
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003753- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3754 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003755
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003756- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3757 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3758 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3759 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3760
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003761- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3762 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003763
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003764- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3765 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3766 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3767 and __imul__.
3768
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003769- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003770 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3771 is called.
3772
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003773- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3774 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3775 interpreter was compiled.
3776
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003777- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3778 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3779 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003780 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003781 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3782 1, not 2.
3783
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003784- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3785 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3786 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3787 limit.
3788
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003789- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3790 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3791 bug #623464.
3792
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003793- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3794 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3795 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3796 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3797
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003798Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003799-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003800
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003801- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3802
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003803- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3804 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3805 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3806 with Python 2.3a2.
3807
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003808- os.path exposes getctime.
3809
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003810- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003811 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003812 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003813 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003814 unit tests of floating point results.
3815
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003816- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3817 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3818 has been increased.
3819
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003820- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3821 executed.
3822
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003823- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3824 postinstallation script.
3825
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003826- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3827 test the current module.
3828
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003829- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003830 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3831 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3832 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3833 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3834
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003835- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003836 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003837 Ward's Optik package.
3838
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003839- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3840 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3841 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3842 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3843
3844- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3845 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003846 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003847
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003848- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3849 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3850 shelf are binary pickles.
3851
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003852- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3853 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3854
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003855- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3856 modules are iterators now.
3857
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003858- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3859 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3860 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3861 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3862 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3863 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003864
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003865- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3866 with their entity value.
3867
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003868- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3869
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003870- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3871 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003872
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003873- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3874 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003875 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003876
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003877- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3878 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3879 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3880 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3881 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3882 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3883 main():
3884
3885 import locale
3886 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3887
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003888- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3889 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3890
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003891- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3892 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3893 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3894 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3895 to the new standard.
3896
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003897- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3898 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3899 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3900 an extension to the database.
3901
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003902- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3903 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3904 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3905 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003906 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003907
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003908- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003909 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003910
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003911- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3912 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3913 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3914 bounded integers.
3915
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003916- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3917 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3918 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3919 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3920 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3921 in existence.
3922
3923 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3924 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3925 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3926 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3927 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3928 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3929
3930 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3931 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3932 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3933 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3934
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003935- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3936 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3937 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3938
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003939- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3940
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003941- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3942 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3943 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3944 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3945
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003946- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3947 argument.
3948
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003949- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3950 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3951 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3952 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3953 [SF patch 560794].
3954
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003955- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3956 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3957 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003958 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3959 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3960 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003961
3962- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3963 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003964
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003965- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3966 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3967 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3968 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003969
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003970- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3971 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3972 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3973 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3974 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3975
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003976- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003977
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003978- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3979
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003980- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3981 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3982 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3983 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3984 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3985 identical to None.
3986
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003987- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3988 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3989 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3990 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3991 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3992 results now.
3993
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003994- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3995 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3996
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003997- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3998 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3999 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4000 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4001 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4002 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4003 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4004 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4005
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004006- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4007
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004008- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4009 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4010
4011- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4012 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4013 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4014 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4015 and other systems.
4016
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004017- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4018 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4019 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4020 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 +00004021 work well with these.
4022
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004023- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4024
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004025- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004026 connections.
4027
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004028- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4029 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4030 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4031
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004032- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4033 sets
4034
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004035- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4036 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4037 name.
4038
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004039- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4040 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4041 passed in.
4042
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004043- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004044 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004045 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4046 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004047
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004048- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4049
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004050- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4051
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004052- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4053 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4054 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4055
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004056- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4057 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4058 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4059 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004060 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004061
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004062- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004063 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004064 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004065
4066- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4067 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4068 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4069
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004070- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004071 the value of its expression argument.
4072
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004073- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4074 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4075 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4076
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004077- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4078 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4079 skipstone browser was included.
4080
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004081- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4082 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4083
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004084Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004085-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004086
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004087- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4088 names in addition to accepting file names.
4089
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004090- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4091 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4092 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4093 still used and useful.)
4094
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004095- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4096 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4097 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4098 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004099
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004100- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4101 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4102 the generated binary.
4103
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004104Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004105-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004106
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004107- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4108
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004109- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4110 except in the hands of experts.
4111
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004112- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004113 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4114 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4115 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004116
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004117- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4118 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4119 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4120 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4121 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4122 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4123 builds.
4124
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004125- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4126 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4127 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4128 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4129 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4130 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4131 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4132 new type.
4133
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004134- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004135
4136 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4137 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4138 positive infinities.
4139
4140 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4141 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4142 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4143 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4144 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4145 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4146 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4147
4148 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4149
4150 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4151
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004152- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4153 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4154 size of the executable.
4155
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004156- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4157 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4158 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4159 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004160
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004161- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4162
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004163- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4164 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4165 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004166
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004167- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4168 well as Unix.
4169
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004170- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4171 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4172 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4173 modules in the README file for details.
4174
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004175C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004176-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004177
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004178- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4179 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004180 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004181 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004182 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004183
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004184- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4185 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4186 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4187 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4188 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4189 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004190 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004191 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4192 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4193 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4194 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4195 aligned.)
4196
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004197- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4198 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4199 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4200
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004201- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4202 level.
4203
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004204- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4205 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4206 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4207 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4208 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4209
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004210- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4211 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4212 code.
4213
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004214- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4215 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4216 adjusting for negative indices.
4217
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004218- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4219 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4220 object.
4221
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004222- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4223 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4224 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4225
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004226- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4227 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004228
4229- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4230
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004231- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4232 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4233 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4234 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4235
4236- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4237
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004238- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004239
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004240- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004241 without going through the buffer API.
4242
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004243- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004244
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004245- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4246 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4247 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4248 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4249
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004250- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4251 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4252
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004253- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004254 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4255
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004256New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004257-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004258
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004259- OpenVMS is now supported.
4260
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004261- AtheOS is now supported.
4262
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004263- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4264
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004265- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4266
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004267Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004268-----
4269
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004270- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4271 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4272 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004273
4274Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004275-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004276
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004277- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4278 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4279 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4280 bugs.
4281 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004282 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004283 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4284 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004285 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004286
4287- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004288 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004289
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004290- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4291 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4292
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004293- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4294 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004295 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004296 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4297
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004298- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4299 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4300 use files" uninstall option).
4301
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004302- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4303
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004304- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4305 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4306
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004307- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4308 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4309 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4310
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004311- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4312 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4313 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4314 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4315 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004316 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4317 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4318 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004319
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004320- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004321 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004322 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4323 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4324 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4325 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4326 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4327 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4328 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4329 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4330 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4331 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4332 work around.
4333
4334- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4335 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4336 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4337 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4338 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4339 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4340 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4341 specified with O_CREAT too).
4342
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004343Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004344----
4345
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004346- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004347
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004348- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4349 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4350 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4351
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004352- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4353 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4354 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4355
4356- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4357 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4358 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4359 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4360 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4361 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4362 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4363 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004364
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004365- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4366 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4367 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004368
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004369- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4370 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4371 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4372 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4373 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004374
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004375- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4376 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4377 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004378
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004379- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4380 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004381
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004382- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4383 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4384 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4385 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4386 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004387
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004388- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4389 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4390 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4391
4392- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4393 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4394 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004395
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004396- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4397 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4398 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4399 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004400 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004401
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004402- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4403 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004404
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004405- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4406 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004407
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004408- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004409 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004410 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4411 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004412
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004413
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004414What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004415===============================
4416
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004417*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4418
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004419Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004420--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004421
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004422- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4423 with a custom metaclass.
4424
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004425Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004426-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004427
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004428- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4429 are proxies.
4430
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004431Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004432-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004433
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004434- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4435 very short strings.
4436
4437- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4438 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4439 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4440 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4441 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4442
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004443Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004444-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004445
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004446- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4447 close or delete time).
4448
4449- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4450 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4451
4452- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4453
4454- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004455 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004456
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004457Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004458-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004459
4460Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004461-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004462
4463C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004464-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004465
4466New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004467-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004468
4469Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004470-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004471
4472Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004473-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004474
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004475- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4476
4477- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4478 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4479
4480- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4481 deleted at process exit time.
4482
4483- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4484 in backslash.
4485
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004486Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004487----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004488
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004489- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4490 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4491 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4492
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004493
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004494What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004495===========================
4496
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004497*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4498
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004499Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004500--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004501
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004502- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4503 been extensively updated. See
4504
4505 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4506
4507 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4508
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004509- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4510 deleted!
4511
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004512- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4513 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4514 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4515 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4516 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4517
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004518- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4519
4520 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4521 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4522
4523 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4524 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4525 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4526 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4527 supported anyway.
4528
4529 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4530 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4531
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004532- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4533 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4534 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4535 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4536 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004537
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004538- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4539 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4540 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4541
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004542Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004543-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004544
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004545- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4546 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4547 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4548 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4549 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4550 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004551 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4552 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4553 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4554 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004555
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004556- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4557 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4558 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4559
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004560Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004561-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004562
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004563- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4564
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004565Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004566-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004567
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004568- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4569 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4570 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4571 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4572 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4573 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4574
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004575- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4576
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004577- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4578
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004579- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4580
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004581- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4582 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4583 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4584
4585- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4586
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004587Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004588-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004589
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004590- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4591 off a search on Google.
4592
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004593Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004594-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004595
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004596- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4597 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4598 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4599 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4600 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4601 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4602 other platforms should do likewise.
4603
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004604- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4605 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4606 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4607
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004608C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004609-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004610
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004611- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4612 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4613 producing key-value pairs.
4614
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004615- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004616 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004617 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4618 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4619 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4620 previously went unchallenged.
4621
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004622New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004623-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004624
4625Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004626-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004627
4628Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004629-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004630
4631Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004632----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004633
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004634- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4635 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004636
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004637- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4638 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4639 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4640 home.
4641
4642
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004643What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004644===========================
4645
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004646*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4647
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004648Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004649--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004650
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004651- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4652 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004653
4654 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004655 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004656
4657 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4658 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004659 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004660 This needs to be documented.
4661
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004662- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4663 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4664
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004665- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4666 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4667 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4668
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004669- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4670 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4671
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004672- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4673 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4674 class forbids it).
4675
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004676- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4677 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4678 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4679
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004680- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4681
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004682Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004683-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004684
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004685- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4686 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004687 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004688
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004689- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4690 (like 1 + '').
4691
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004692Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004693-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004694
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004695- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4696 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4697 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4698 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004699 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004700 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4701
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004702- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4703 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4704 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4705 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4706
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004707- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4708 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004709 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4710 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4711 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004712
4713- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4714 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004715
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004716- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4717 bytes on its input.
4718
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004719Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004720-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004721
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004722- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004723 convenience function.
4724
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004725- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4726 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4727 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004728 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4729 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4730 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4731 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4732 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4733 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004734
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004735- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4736 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4737 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4738 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4739
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004740- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4741 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4742 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4743
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004744- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4745 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4746 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4747 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4748
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004749- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4750 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004751 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004752 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4753 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4754 new -l and -e options.
4755
4756- statcache is now deprecated.
4757
4758- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4759 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004760 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004761 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4762 time properly taken into account.
4763
4764- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4765 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4766 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4767 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4768
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004769Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004770-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004771
4772Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004773-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004774
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004775- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4776 is built with libdb3 if available.
4777
4778- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4779
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004780C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004781-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004782
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004783- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4784 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4785 PySequence_Size().
4786
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004787- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4788
4789- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4790 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4791 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4792
4793- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4794 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4795
4796- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4797 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4798
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004799New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004800-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004801
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004802- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4803 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4804
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004805- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4806 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4807
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004808- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4809
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004810Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004811-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004812
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004813- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4814 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4815
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004816Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004817-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004818
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004819Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004820----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004821
4822- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4823 removed completely in the next release.
4824
4825- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4826 OSX.
4827
4828- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4829 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4830
4831- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4832
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004833
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004834What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004835===========================
4836
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004837*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4838
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004839Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004840--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004841
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004842- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004843 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004844 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004845 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4846 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004847 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4848 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004849 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4850 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004851
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004852- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4853 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4854
4855- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4856 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4857
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004858Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004859-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004860
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004861- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4862 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4863 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4864 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4865 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4866 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4867 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4868 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4869
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004870- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4871 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4872 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4873 example).
4874
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004875- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004876 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004877 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004878 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004879
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004880- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4881 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4882 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004883 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004884
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004885- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4886 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4887 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4888 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4889 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4890 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4891
4892 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4893
4894 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4895
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004896Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004897-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004898
4899- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4900
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004901- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4902
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004903- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4904 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004905
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004906- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4907 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4908 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4909 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4910 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4911 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004912 attributes.
4913
4914- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4915 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4916 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004917
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004918- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4919 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4920 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004921
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004922- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4923 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4924 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004925 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4926 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4927
4928- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4929 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004930
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004931Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004932-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004933
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004934- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4935 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4936
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004937- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4938 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4939 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4940 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4941
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004942- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4943 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4944 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4945 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4946
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004947 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4948 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4949 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4950 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4951 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4952 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4953 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4954 without losing information).
4955
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004956- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004957 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4958 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4959 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4960 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4961 module).
4962
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004963 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004964 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4965 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4966 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4967 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004968
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004969- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004970 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4971 encoding.
4972
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004973- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4974 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4975
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004976- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004977 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4978
4979- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4980 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4981 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4982 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4983
4984- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4985
4986- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4987 ON, and OFF.
4988
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004989- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4990 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4991
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004992Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004993-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004994
4995- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4996 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4997 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004998
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004999- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5000 been added: -X and -E.
5001
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005002Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005003-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005004
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005005- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5006 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5007
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005008C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005009-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005010
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005011- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5012 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5013 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5014 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5015 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5016
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005017- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5018 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5019 as long) arguments.
5020
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005021- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5022 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5023 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5024 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5025 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5026 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5027
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005028- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5029 input.
5030
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005031New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005032-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005033
5034Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005035-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005036
5037Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005038-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005039
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005040- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5041 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5042 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5043
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005044- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5045 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5046 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005047 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005048
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005049 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5050 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5051 import signal
5052 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005053
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005054 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005055 while 1:
5056 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005057 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005058 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5059 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5060 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5061 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005062
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005063
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005064What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5065===========================
5066
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005067*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5068
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005069Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005070--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005071
5072- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5073 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5074 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5075
5076- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5077 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5078 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5079 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5080 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5081 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5082 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005083
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005084- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005085 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005086 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5087 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5088 associate a docstring with a property.
5089
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005090- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5091 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5092 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5093 other built-in object types.
5094
5095- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5096 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5097 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5098 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5099 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5100
5101- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5102 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5103
5104- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5105 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005106 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005107 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5108 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5109 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5110 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5111 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5112
5113- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5114 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5115 class.
5116
5117- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5118 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5119 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5120 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5121
5122- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5123 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5124 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5125 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5126
5127- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5128 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5129
5130- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5131 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5132 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5133 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5134 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005135 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005136 with the same value as s.
5137
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005138- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5139
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005140Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005141----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005142
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005143- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5144
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005145- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5146 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5147 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5148 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5149 objects.
5150
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005151- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5152 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005153 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5154 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5155
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005156- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5157 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5158 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5159
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005160Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005161-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005162
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005163- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5164 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5165 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5166 by the instances.
5167
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005168- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5169 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5170 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5171
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005172- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5173 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5174 before the entire comparison is complete.
5175
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005176- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5177 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5178 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5179
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005180- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5181 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5182 getwriter().
5183
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005184- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5185 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5186
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005187- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005188 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5189 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5190
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005191- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5192 iterable object.
5193
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005194- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5195 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005196
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005197- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5198 authentication.
5199
5200- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5201 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005202
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005203- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005204 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5205 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5206 a sample driver.)
5207
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005208Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005209-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005210
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005211- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5212 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5213 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5214 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5215 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5216 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5217 kernel has large file support.
5218
5219- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5220 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5221 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5222 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5223 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5224
5225- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5226 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5227 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5228
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005229C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005230-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005231
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005232- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5233 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5234
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005235New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005236-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005237
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005238- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5239 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5240
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005241Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005242-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005243
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005244- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5245 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5246 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5247 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5248 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5249
5250- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5251 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5252 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5253 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5254
5255- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5256 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5257
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005258Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005259-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005260
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005261- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005262 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5263 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005264
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005265
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005266What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5267===========================
5268
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005269*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5270
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005271Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005272----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005273
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005274- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5275 big to represent as a C double.
5276
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005277- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5278 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5279 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5280 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5281 restriction).
5282
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005283- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5284 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5285 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5286 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5287 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5288
5289 >>> dir([])
5290 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5291 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5292 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5293 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5294 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5295 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5296 'reverse', 'sort']
5297
5298 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5299
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005300- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005301 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5302 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5303 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5304 OverflowError exception.
5305
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005306- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005307 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005308 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5309 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5310 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5311 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5312 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005313 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005314 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5315 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5316
5317 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5318 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5319 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5320 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005321
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005322- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005323 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5324 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5325 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5326 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5327 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5328 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5329 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5330 once it is created.
5331
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005332- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5333 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5334 (key, value) pairs.
5335
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005336- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005337 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5338 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5339
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005340- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5341 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5342 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5343 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5344 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005345
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005346- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005347 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5348 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5349
5350 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5351
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005352- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005353 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5354
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005355Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005356-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005357
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005358- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005359 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5360 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005361
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005362- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5363 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5364 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5365 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5366 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5367 in this area anymore).
5368
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005369- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5370 threading.Timer.
5371
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005372- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5373 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5374
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005375- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005376 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5377
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005378- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005379 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5380 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5381 converted to Python longs.
5382
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005383- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005384 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5385
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005386- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5387 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5388 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5389
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005390Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005391-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005392
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005393- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5394 division operators as per PEP 238.
5395
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005396Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005397-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005398
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005399- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5400 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5401 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5402 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5403
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005404C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005405-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005406
5407- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005408
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005409- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5410 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005411 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005412
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005413 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5414 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005415 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005416 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005417
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005418- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005419 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5420 module:
5421
5422 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005423
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005424 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5425 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005426
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005427 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5428 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005429
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005430 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5431
5432 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5433
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005434- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005435 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5436 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5437 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005438
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005439New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005440-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005441
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005442- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5443 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5444 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5445 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5446 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005447
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005448Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005449-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005450
5451Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005452-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005453
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005454- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5455 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5456 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5457 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005458 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5459 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5460 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5461 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5462 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005463
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005464- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005465 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5466
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005467
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005468What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5469===========================
5470
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005471*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5472
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005473Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005474-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005475
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005476- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5477 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5478
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005479- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5480 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5481 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005482
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005483- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5484 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5485 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5486 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005487
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005488- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5489
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005490- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005491
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005492Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005493-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005494
5495- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005496 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005497 the module docstring for details.
5498
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005499Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005500-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005501
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005502- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005503 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5504 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5505 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005506
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005507- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5508 Nick Mathewson.
5509
5510Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005511----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005512
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005513- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5514 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5515 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5516 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5517 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5518 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5519 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5520 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5521
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005522- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5523 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5524 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5525 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5526
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005527- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5528 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5529 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5530 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5531 come a long way).
5532
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005533- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5534 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5535 write filters for these warnings).
5536
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005537- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5538 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5539 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5540 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5541 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5542
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005543- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5544 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5545 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5546 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5547 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5548 older distribution.
5549
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005550Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005551-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005552
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005553- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5554 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005555 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005556
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005557- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5558 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5559 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5560
5561- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5562
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005563- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5564
5565- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5566
5567- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5568
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005569- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005570
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005571- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5572
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005573New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005574-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005575
5576C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005577-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005578
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005579- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5580 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5581 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5582 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5583 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5584 against buffer overruns.
5585
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005586- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005587 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5588 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005589 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5590 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5591 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5592
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005593- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5594 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5595 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5596 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5597 deprecated.
5598
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005599Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005600-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005601
5602- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5603 relevant is found.
5604
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005605
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005606What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005607===========================
5608
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005609*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5610
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005611Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005612----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005613
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005614- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5615 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5616 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5617 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5618 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5619 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5620 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5621 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005622 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005623 repaired.
5624
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005625- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005626 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005627 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5628 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5629 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5630 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5631 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5632 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5633 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5634 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5635
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005636- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5637 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5638 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5639 leading BMO character).
5640
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005641- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5642 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5643 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5644
5645 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5646 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5647 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005648
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005649 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5650 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5651 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5652 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5653 for various simple to use conversions.
5654
5655 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5656 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5657
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005658 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5659 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5660 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5661 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5662 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5663 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5664 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5665 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5666 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5667 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5668 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5669 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5670 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5671 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5672 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005673
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005674- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5675 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5676 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005677 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005678 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005679
5680 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005681 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5682 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5683 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5684 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5685 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005686 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5687 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005688
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005689 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5690 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5691 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005692 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005693
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005694- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5695 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5696 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5697 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5698 floating arithmetic,
5699
5700 x = 9007199254740992.0
5701 print long(x)
5702
5703 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5704 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5705 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5706 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5707 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5708 functions are of good quality).
5709
5710 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5711 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5712 algorithms to break.
5713
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005714- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5715 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5716 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5717 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5718 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5719 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5720 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5721 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5722 order.
5723
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005724- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5725 operation along the most common code paths.
5726
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005727- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5728 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5729
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005730- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5731 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5732 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5733 {}.update(UserDict())
5734
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005735- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5736 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5737 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5738 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5739 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5740 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5741 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5742 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5743
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005744- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005745 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005746
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005747 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005748 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5749 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005750 join() method of strings
5751 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005752 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5753 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005754 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005755 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005756
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005757- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5758 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5759
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005760- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5761 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5762
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005763- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5764 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5765 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5766 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5767
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005768- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5769 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005770 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005771 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5772 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005773
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005774- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5775
5776
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005777Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005778-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005779
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005780- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005781 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005782 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5783 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5784
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005785- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5786 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5787
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005788- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5789 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5790 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5791 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5792
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005793- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5794 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5795 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5796
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005797- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5798
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005799- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5800
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005801- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5802 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5803 that are still imported into string.py).
5804
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005805- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5806
5807- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5808 Now it does.
5809
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005810- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5811
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005812- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5813 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5814 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5815 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5816 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005817 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5818 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005819
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005820- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5821 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5822 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5823 'help(object)'.
5824
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005825Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005826-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005827
5828- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005829 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005830 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5831 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5832
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005833- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005834 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5835 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005836
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005837C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005838-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005839
5840- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5841 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005842
5843----
5844
5845**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**