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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
8================================
9
10*Release date: XX-XXX-XXXX*
11
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +000012License
13-------
14
15The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
16is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
17changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
18Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
19intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
20durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
21the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
22License::
23
24 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
25
26says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
27to Python 2.1.1.
28
29The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
30License Version 2.
31
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +000032Core and builtins
33-----------------
34
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +000035- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
36 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
37 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
38 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
39 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
40 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
41 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
42 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
43 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
44 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
45
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +000046- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +000047
48Extension Modules
49-----------------
50
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +000051- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
52 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
53 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
54 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +000055
56Library
57-------
58
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +000059- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
60 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
61 returned.
62
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +000063- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
64
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +000065- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
66 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
67
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +000068- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
69
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +000070- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
71 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +000072
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +000073- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
74
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +000075- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
76
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +000077- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +000078 the source code is updated and reloaded.
79
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +000080Build
81-----
82
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +000083- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +000084
85C API
86-----
87
88...
89
90Documentation
91-------------
92
93...
94
95Tests
96-----
97
98...
99
100Windows
101-------
102
103...
104
105Mac
106---
107
108...
109
110New platforms
111-------------
112
113...
114
115Tools/Demos
116-----------
117
118...
119
120
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000121What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
122================================
123
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000124*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000125
126Core and builtins
127-----------------
128
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000129- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000130 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
131
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000132- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
133 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
134 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
135 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
136
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000137- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
138 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
139
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000140- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
141 constant.
142
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000143- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
144 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
145 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
146 large), and to anomalies such as
147 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
148 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
149 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
150 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000151
152Extension modules
153-----------------
154
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000155- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
156 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000157 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
158 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
159 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000160
161Library
162-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000163
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000164- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000165 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000166 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
167 --swig-cpp.
168
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000169- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
170 it is set.
171
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000172- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000173
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000174- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
175 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
176 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
177 Closes bug #1039270.
178
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000179- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000180
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000181 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000182 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
183 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
184 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
185 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
186 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
187 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
188 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
189 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
190 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
191 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
192 + Updates to documentation.
193
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000194- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
195 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
196 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
197 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
198
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000199- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000200
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000201- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
202 applications should use the getmember function.
203
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000204- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
205
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000206- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
207 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
208 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
209 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
210 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
211 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
212 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
213 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
214 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
215
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000216- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
217 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000218 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000219
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000220- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
221 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
222 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
223 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
224 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
225 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
226 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
227 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000228
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000229- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
230 the new public features (of which there are many).
231
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000232- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000233 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
234 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
235 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
236 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000237 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000238
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000239- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
240
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000241- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
242 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
243 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
244 options.
245
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000246- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
247 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
248 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
249 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
250 conditions under which non-string values work.
251
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000252Build
253-----
254
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000255- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
256 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
257 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
258
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000259- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
260 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
261 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
262 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
263 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000264
265C API
266-----
267
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000268- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
269 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
270
271- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
272
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000273- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
274 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
275 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
276 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
277 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
278 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
279 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
280 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
281 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
282
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000283- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
284
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000285- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
286 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
287 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000288
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000289Tests
290-----
291
292- test__locale ported to unittest
293
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000294Mac
295---
296
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000297- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
298 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
299 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000300
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000301Tools/Demos
302-----------
303
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000304- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
305 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
306 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
307 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
308 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000309
310
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000311What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
312=================================
313
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000314*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000315
316Core and builtins
317-----------------
318
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000319- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000320 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
321
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000322- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
323 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
324 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
325 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
326 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
327 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
328 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
329 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000330 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
331 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
332 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
333 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
334 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000335
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000336- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
337 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
338 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
339 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
340 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
341
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000342- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
343
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000344- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
345 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
346
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000347- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
348 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
349 modified the list.
350
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000351- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
352 functions is now writable.
353
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000354- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
355 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
356 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
357 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
358
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000359- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
360 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
361 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
362 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
363 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000364
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000365- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
366 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
367
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000368Extension modules
369-----------------
370
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000371- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
372
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000373- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
374 data.
375
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000376- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
377 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
378 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
379 supposed to have been truncated away.
380
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000381- Added socket.socketpair().
382
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000383- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
384 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
385
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000386- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000387 versions of Python, have now been removed.
388
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000389Library
390-------
391
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000392- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000393 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000394
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000395- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
396 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
397
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000398- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
399 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
400
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000401- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
402
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000403- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
404 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000405
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000406- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
407 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
408
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000409- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
410
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000411- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
412
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000413- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
414
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000415- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
416 Percivall.
417
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000418- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
419 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
420
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000421- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
422 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
423 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000424 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000425
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000426- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
427 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
428 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
429 and exponent.
430
431- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
432
433- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
434 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
435 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
436
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000437- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
438 to the readline module.
439
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000440- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000441 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
442 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000443
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000444- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
445 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
446 contains symlinks.
447
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000448- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
449 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
450
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000451- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
452 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
453 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
454
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000455- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
456 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
457 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
458 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
459 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
460 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
461 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
462 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
463 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
464 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
465 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
466 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
467 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
468
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000469- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
470
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000471Tools/Demos
472-----------
473
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000474- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
475 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
476
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000477- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
478
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000479Build
480-----
481
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000482- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
483 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
484 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
485 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
486 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
487 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
488 plans to do so.
489
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000490- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
491 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
492
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000493- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
494 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
495
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000496- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
497 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
498
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000499- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
500 GNU/k*BSD systems.
501
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000502- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
503 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
504
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000505C API
506-----
507
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000508..
509
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000510Documentation
511-------------
512
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000513- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
514 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
515
516- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
517 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
518 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000519
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000520New platforms
521-------------
522
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000523- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
524
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000525Tests
526-----
527
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000528..
529
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000530Windows
531-------
532
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000533- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
534 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
535 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
536 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
537 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
538 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
539 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
540 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
541 the problem.
542
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000543Mac
544---
545
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000546..
547
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000548
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000549What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
550=================================
551
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000552*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000553
554Core and builtins
555-----------------
556
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000557- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
558 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
559 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
560 sensitive code.
561
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000562- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000563 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000564
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000565 @staticmethod
566 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000567
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000568 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000569
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000570- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
571 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
572 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
573 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
574 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
575 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
576 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
577 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
578 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
579 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
580 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
581
582 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
583 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
584 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
585 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
586 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
587 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
588 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
589
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000590- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
591 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
592
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000593- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000594 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000595
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000596- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000597 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000598 which was missing for no apparent reason.
599
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000600- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000601 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
602 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
603
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000604- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
605 types that support garbage collection.
606
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000607- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
608
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000609- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
610 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
611 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
612 Jython.
613
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000614- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
615
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000616- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
617 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
618
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000619- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
620 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
621 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000622
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000623- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
624 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
625 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
626
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000627Extension modules
628-----------------
629
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000630- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
631
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000632Library
633-------
634
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000635- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
636 TIS-620
637
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000638- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
639 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
640 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
641 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
642 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
643 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
644 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
645 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
646 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
647 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
648
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000649- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
650
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000651- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
652 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
653 same as when the argument is omitted).
654 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
655
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000656- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
657
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000658- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
659 schemes are offered.
660
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000661- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
662
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000663- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
664 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
665 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
666
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000667- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
668
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000669- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
670 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
671
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000672- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
673 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
674 when dummy_threading is being used.
675
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000676- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
677 from a tarfile.
678
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000679- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000680 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000681
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000682- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
683 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
684 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
685 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
686
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000687- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
688 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
689
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000690- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
691 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
692 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
693 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
694 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
695 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
696 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
697 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
698 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
699 by some other method in progress).
700
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000701- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
702 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
703 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000704
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000705- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
706
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000707- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
708 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
709 AM Kuchling.
710
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000711- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
712 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
713 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
714
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000715- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
716 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
717 instead of unsigned.
718
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000719- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000720 no longer part of the public API.
721
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000722- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
723 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
724 string methods of the same name).
725
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000726- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000727 SF patch 945642.
728
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000729- doctest unittest integration improvements:
730
731 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
732
733 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
734 DocTestSuites.
735
736- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
737 that provide thread-local data.
738
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000739- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
740 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
741
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000742- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
743
744- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
745 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
746 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
747
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000748- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
749
750 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
751 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
752 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000753
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000754 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
755 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
756 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
757 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
758
759 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
760 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
761
762 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
763 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
764 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
765 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
766
767 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
768 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
769 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
770 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
771 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
772
773 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
774 wrapping help output.
775
776 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
777 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
778 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000779
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000780C API
781-----
782
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000783- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
784 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
785 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
786 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
787 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
788 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
789 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
790 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
791 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
792 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
793 its visible semantics have not changed.
794
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000795- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
796 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
797
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000798Documentation
799-------------
800
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000801- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000802
803 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000804 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000805
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000806 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000807
808 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
809
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000810- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000811
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000812Tests
813-----
814
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000815- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +0000816 platforms that use the Makefile.
817
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000818- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
819 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
820 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
821
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000822
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000823What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
824=================================
825
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +0000826*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000827
828Core and builtins
829-----------------
830
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +0000831- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
832 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
833 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
834 objects now (one object instead of three).
835
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +0000836- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
837 Windows DLLs.
838
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +0000839- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
840 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +0000841
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +0000842- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
843 a new .pyc magic.
844
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +0000845- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
846 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
847 be there.
848
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +0000849- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
850 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
851 the LC_NUMERIC category.
852
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +0000853- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
854 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
855 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
856
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +0000857- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
858
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +0000859- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
860 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
861 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +0000862
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +0000863- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
864 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
865
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +0000866- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
867
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000868- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000869 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000870
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +0000871- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
872
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +0000873- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
874
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +0000875- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
876 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
877
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +0000878- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
879 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
880 Fixes bug #858016 .
881
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +0000882- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
883 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
884 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
885
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +0000886- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
887 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
888 improves their performance (about 35%).
889
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +0000890- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
891 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
892 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
893
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +0000894- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
895 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
896 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
897 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
898
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000899- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
900 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
901 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
902 length is not known).
903
904- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
905 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +0000906 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
907 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000908 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
909
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +0000910- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
911 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
912
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +0000913- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
914 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
915 keyword arguments.
916
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +0000917- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
918 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
919 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
920
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +0000921- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
922 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
923 cases.
924
925- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
926 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
927 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
928 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
929 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
930 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
931 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
932 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
933 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
934 a release build.
935
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +0000936- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
937 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
938
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000939- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000940 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000941
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +0000942- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
943 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
944 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
945 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
946 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
947 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
948 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
949 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
950 destroyed.
951
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +0000952- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
953 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
954 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
955 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
956 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
957 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
958 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
959 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
960
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +0000961- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
962 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
963 character other than a space.
964
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +0000965- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
966 by the function object or by the method object, the function
967 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
968 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
969 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
970 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
971 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
972 attributes with the same name.
973
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000974- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
975 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
976 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
977 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
978 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
979 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
980 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
981 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
982 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
983 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
984 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
985 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
986 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
987 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +0000988
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +0000989- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
990 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
991 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
992 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
993 This has been repaired.
994
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000995- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
996
997- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
998
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +0000999- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1000 over a sequence.
1001
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001002- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001003 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001004
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001005- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1006
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001007- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1008 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1009 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1010 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1011 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1012 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1013 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1014 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1015
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001016- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1017 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1018 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1019
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001020- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1021 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1022 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1023 freelist.
1024
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001025- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1026 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1027
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001028- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1029 number.
1030
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001031- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1032 a TypeError exception.
1033
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001034- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1035 820195.
1036
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001037- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1038 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1039 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1040
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001041- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001042 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1043 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001044
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001045- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1046 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1047 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1048
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001049- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1050 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001051 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001052
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001053- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001054 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1055 the first call.
1056
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001057
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001058Extension modules
1059-----------------
1060
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001061- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1062 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1063
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001064- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1065 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1066 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1067 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1068 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1069 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1070 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001071
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001072- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1073
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001074- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1075
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001076- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1077 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1078
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001079- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1080 fewer false positives.
1081
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001082- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1083 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1084
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001085- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001086 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1087
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001088- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001089 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001090 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001091 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1092 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001093
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001094- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1095 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1096 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1097 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1098
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001099- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1100 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1101 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1102 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1103 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1104 #897625.
1105
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001106- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1107 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1108
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001109- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1110 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1111 and pops on either side of the deque.
1112
1113- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1114 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1115
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001116- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1117 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1118 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1119 other functions that expect a function argument.
1120
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001121- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1122
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001123- os.getsid was added.
1124
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001125- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1126 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1127 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1128
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001129- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1130
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001131- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1132
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001133- readline.clear_history was added.
1134
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001135- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1136
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001137- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1138
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001139- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1140
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001141- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1142
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001143- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1144
1145- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1146
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001147- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1148
1149- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1150
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001151- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1152 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1153 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1154
1155- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1156 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1157 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1158 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1159 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1160 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1161 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1162
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001163- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1164 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1165 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1166 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001167
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001168- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001169 iterators from a single iterable.
1170
1171- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1172 of raising a TypeError exception.
1173
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001174- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1175 as parameter.
1176
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001177Library
1178-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001179
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001180- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1181 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1182 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001183
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001184- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1185 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1186 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001187
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001188- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001189
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001190- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1191 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001192
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001193- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1194 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1195
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001196- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1197
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001198- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001199 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001200
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001201- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001202 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001203
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001204- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1205
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001206- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1207 on cygwin and mingw32.
1208
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001209- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1210
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001211- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1212 module.
1213
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001214- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1215 installation scheme for all platforms.
1216
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001217- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001218 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001219
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001220- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1221 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1222 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1223
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001224- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1225 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1226 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1227
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001228- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1229
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001230- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1231
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001232- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1233 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1234
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001235- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1236 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1237 type pattern with the same value exists.
1238
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001239- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1240 when run from the command prompt).
1241
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001242- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1243 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1244
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001245- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1246 default sort).
1247
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001248- Added global runctx function to profile module
1249
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001250- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1251
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001252- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1253
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001254- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1255
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001256- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001257 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1258 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1259 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1260 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1261 accordingly.
1262
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001263- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1264 decoding standards.
1265
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001266- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1267 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1268 called for all requests.
1269
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001270- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1271 they are passed to the compiler.
1272
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001273- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1274 indent, width and depth.
1275
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001276- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1277 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1278
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001279- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1280 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1281
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001282- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1283
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001284- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1285
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001286- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1287
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001288- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1289 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1290
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001291- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001292 for better performance.
1293
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001294- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001295
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001296- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1297 a string).
1298
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001299- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1300
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001301- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1302
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001303- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1304
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001305- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1306
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001307- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1308 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1309 list of fieldnames.
1310
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001311- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1312 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1313
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001314- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1315
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001316- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1317 empty lists.
1318
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001319- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1320 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1321 and shelves.
1322
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001323- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1324 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1325
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001326- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001327 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1328 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001329
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001330- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1331 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001332 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001333
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001334- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001335 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1336 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1337
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001338- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1339 and removed in Py2.4.
1340
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001341- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1342
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001343- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1344
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001345Tools/Demos
1346-----------
1347
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001348- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1349 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1350
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001351- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1352
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001353- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1354 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1355 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1356 destination in situations where both files are given.
1357
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001358- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1359 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1360 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1361 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1362
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001363- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1364
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001365- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1366 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1367 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1368 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1369 now.
1370
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001371- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1372 in effect
1373
1374- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1375 C-c C-h
1376
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001377- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1378 -d option was given.
1379
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001380Build
1381-----
1382
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001383- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1384 build under OS X.
1385
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001386- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1387 --enable-profiling.
1388
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001389- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1390 is configured --with-tsc.
1391
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001392- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1393 on AMD64.
1394
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001395- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1396 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1397
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001398- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1399 removed.
1400
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001401- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1402 supported (see PEP 11).
1403
1404- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1405
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001406- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1407
1408- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1409 (see PEP 11).
1410
1411- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1412 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1413
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001414C API
1415-----
1416
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001417- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1418 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1419 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1420
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001421- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1422 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1423 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1424 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1425
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001426- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1427 generator objects.
1428
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001429- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1430 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001431 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1432 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001433
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001434- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1435 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1436
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001437- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1438 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1439 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1440 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1441 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1442
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001443- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1444 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1445 about 10% faster.
1446
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001447- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1448 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1449
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001450- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1451 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1452 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1453 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1454
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001455Windows
1456-------
1457
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001458- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1459 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1460 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1461 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1462
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001463- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1464 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1465 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1466
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001467
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001468What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1469===============================
1470
1471*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1472
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001473IDLE
1474----
1475
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001476- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1477 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1478 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1479 context-menu actions.
1480
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001481- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1482 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1483 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1484 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1485 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1486 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1487 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1488 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1489 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1490
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001491
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001492What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1493=============================================
1494
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001495*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001496
1497Core and builtins
1498-----------------
1499
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001500- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001501 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001502 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1503
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001504Extension modules
1505-----------------
1506
1507- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1508 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1509 than once. This has been fixed.
1510
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001511- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1512 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1513 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1514 call.
1515
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001516- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1517
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001518Library
1519-------
1520
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001521- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1522 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1523
1524- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1525 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1526 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1527 restored.
1528
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001529IDLE
1530----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001531
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001532- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001533
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001534Build
1535-----
1536
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001537- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1538 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1539
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001540C API
1541-----
1542
1543Windows
1544-------
1545
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001546- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1547 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1548
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001549- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1550
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001551Mac
1552---
1553
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001554- Various fixes to pimp.
1555
1556- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1557
1558- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1559 more problems than it solves.
1560
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001561
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001562What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1563=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001564
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001565*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1566
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001567Core and builtins
1568-----------------
1569
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001570- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1571 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1572
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001573- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1574 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001575 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001576
1577- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1578 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1579 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001580 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001581
1582- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1583 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001584
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001585- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1586 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1587 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1588
1589- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001590 770247.
1591
1592- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001593
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001594Extension modules
1595-----------------
1596
1597- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1598 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1599
1600- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1601
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001602- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1603
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001604- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1605 contained within the _strptime module.
1606
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001607- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1608 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1609
1610- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001611 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1612
1613- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1614 the find_class attribute, if present.
1615
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001616- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001617
1618 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1619 (SF bug 763298).
1620
1621 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001622 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1623 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1624 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001625
1626 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1627
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001628Library
1629-------
1630
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001631- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1632
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001633- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1634 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1635 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1636 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1637 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1638 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1639 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1640 or Tester().
1641
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001642- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1643 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1644 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1645 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1646 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1647 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1648 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1649 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1650 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001651
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001652 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001653
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001654- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1655 weren't before was an oversight.
1656
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001657- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1658 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1659
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001660- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1661 when there are no lines.
1662
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001663- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1664 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1665
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001666- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1667 to child processes.
1668
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001669- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1670
1671- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1672
1673- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1674 xmlrpclib.
1675
1676- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1677 responses.
1678
1679- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1680 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1681
1682- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1683 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1684 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1685
1686- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1687 used as patterns.
1688
1689- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1690 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1691 than Tk 8.3.
1692
1693- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1694
1695- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001696
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001697Tools/Demos
1698-----------
1699
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001700- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1701
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001702- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1703
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001704- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001705
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001706Build
1707-----
1708
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001709- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1710
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001711- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1712
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001713- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1714 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001715
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001716- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1717 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1718 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001719
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001720C API
1721-----
1722
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001723- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1724 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1725
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001726Windows
1727-------
1728
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001729- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1730 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1731 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1732 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1733 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1734 Python exception ::
1735
1736 thread.error: can't start new thread
1737
1738 is raised now.
1739
1740- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1741 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1742 instead of from DLL teardown.
1743
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001744Mac
1745---
1746
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001747- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001748 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001749 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1750 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1751 the executable in the bundle.
1752
1753- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001754
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001755- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1756
1757- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1758 on Panther.
1759
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001760What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1761================================
1762
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001763*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001764
1765Core and builtins
1766-----------------
1767
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001768- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1769 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1770 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1771 with the -i option.
1772
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001773- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1774 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1775
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001776- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1777 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1778
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001779- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1780 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1781 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1782 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1783 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1784 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1785 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1786 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1787 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1788 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1789 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1790 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1791 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001792
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001793- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1794 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1795 embedded in a lambda expression.
1796
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001797- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1798 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1799 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1800 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1801 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1802
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001803- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1804 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1805 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1806
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001807- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1808 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1809
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001810- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1811 It's writable again.
1812
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001813- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1814 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1815 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001816 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001817
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001818- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1819 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
1820 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
1821
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001822Extension modules
1823-----------------
1824
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00001825- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
1826 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
1827
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001828- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
1829 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
1830 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
1831 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
1832
1833- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
1834 collection.
1835
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00001836- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
1837 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
1838 unique within a single program run.
1839
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001840- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1841 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1842
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001843- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1844 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1845
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001846- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1847 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001848
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001849- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1850
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001851- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1852 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1853
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001854- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1855 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1856 for many BSD-derived systems.
1857
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001858
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001859Library
1860-------
1861
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001862- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1863 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1864 primary ones:
1865
1866 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1867 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1868 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1869
1870 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1871 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1872 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1873 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1874 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1875 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1876
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001877- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1878 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1879 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1880 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1881 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1882 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1883 argument.
1884
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001885- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1886 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1887 in the archive.
1888
1889- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1890 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1891
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001892- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1893 569574).
1894
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001895- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1896 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1897 no more.
1898
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001899- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1900 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1901 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1902 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1903 code coverage.
1904
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001905- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1906 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
1907 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001908 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
1909 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001910
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001911- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1912 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1913 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001914 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001915
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001916- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1917
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001918- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
1919 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
1920 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
1921 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
1922
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001923- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1924 handling.
1925
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001926- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1927 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1928
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00001929- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
1930 in socket.py.
1931
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00001932- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
1933
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00001934- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
1935 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
1936 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
1937 opener with proxy support.
1938
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001939- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
1940
1941- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
1942
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001943Tools/Demos
1944-----------
1945
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00001946- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
1947
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001948- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
1949
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001950- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
1951 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00001952
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00001953- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
1954 files.
1955
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001956Build
1957-----
1958
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001959- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00001960 different root directory.
1961
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001962C API
1963-----
1964
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00001965- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
1966 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
1967 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
1968 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
1969 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
1970 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
1971 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
1972 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
1973 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
1974 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
1975
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001976- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
1977 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
1978 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
1979 from Python.
1980
1981
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001982New platforms
1983-------------
1984
1985None this time.
1986
1987Tests
1988-----
1989
1990- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
1991 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
1992
1993Windows
1994-------
1995
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00001996- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
1997
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00001998- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
1999 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2000 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2001 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2002 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2003 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2004 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2005 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2006 that's what it's for.
2007
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002008Mac
2009---
2010
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002011- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2012 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2013 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2014 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002015- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2016 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2017- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002018
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002019SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2020------------------------------------
2021
2022430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2023598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2024622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2025661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2026683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2027697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2028713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2029724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2030727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2031729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2032730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2033731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2034732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2035733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2036735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2037740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2038744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2039745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2040747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2041749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2042751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2043753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2044755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2045757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2046760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2047
2048
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002049What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2050================================
2051
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002052*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002053
2054Core and builtins
2055-----------------
2056
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002057- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2058 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2059
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002060- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2061 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2062 and cannot be strings).
2063
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002064- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2065 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2066 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2067 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2068
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002069- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2070 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2071 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2072 Python itself.
2073
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002074- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2075 the referenced object, if it has one.
2076
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002077- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2078 the thread started at
2079 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2080
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002081- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2082 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2083 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2084 placed on a list index.
2085
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002086- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2087 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2088 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2089 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2090
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002091- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2092 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2093 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2094 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2095 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2096 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2097 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2098
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002099- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2100 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2101 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2102 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2103 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2104
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002105- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2106 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002107
2108- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2109 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2110 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2111 #693195.)
2112
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002113- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2114 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002115
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002116- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002117 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002118 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2119 interpreter executions, would fail.
2120
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002121- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002122 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002123 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002124
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002125Extension modules
2126-----------------
2127
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002128- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2129 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2130 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2131 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2132
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002133- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2134 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2135
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002136- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2137 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2138 and Greg Chapman.)
2139
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002140- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2141 recursively.
2142
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002143- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002144 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2145 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2146 leaks.
2147
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002148- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2149
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002150- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2151 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2152 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2153 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2154 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2155 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2156 #705836.
2157
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002158- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002159 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2160
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002161- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2162 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2163 See SF bug #692416.
2164
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002165- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2166 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2167
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002168- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2169 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2170 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002171
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002172- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002173 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2174 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2175
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002176- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2177 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2178 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2179 timeouts to work properly.
2180
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002181Library
2182-------
2183
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002184- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2185 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2186 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2187 future release.
2188
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002189- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2190 for querying platform dependent features.
2191
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002192- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002193
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002194- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2195 pickle protocol versions.
2196
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002197- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2198 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2199 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2200
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002201- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2202
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002203- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2204 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2205 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2206 modules.
2207
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002208- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2209 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2210 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2211
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002212- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2213 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2214
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002215- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2216 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2217 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2218
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002219- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002220 MS Office extensions.
2221
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002222- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2223 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2224
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002225- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2226 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2227
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002228- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2229 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2230 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2231 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2232 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2233 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2234
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002235- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2236 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2237 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002238
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002239- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2240 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2241 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2242
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002243- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2244
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002245- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2246 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2247 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2248
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002249Tools/Demos
2250-----------
2251
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002252- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2253 See the module docstring for details.
2254
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002255Build
2256-----
2257
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002258- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2259 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002260
2261C API
2262-----
2263
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002264- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2265
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002266- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2267 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2268 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2269
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002270- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2271 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002272
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002273 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2274 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2275 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002276
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002277- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002278 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2279
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002280- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2281 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2282 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002283
2284New platforms
2285-------------
2286
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002287None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002288
2289Tests
2290-----
2291
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002292- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2293 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002294
2295Windows
2296-------
2297
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002298- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2299 function.
2300
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002301- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2302 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002303
2304Mac
2305---
2306
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002307- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2308 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002309
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002310- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2311 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002312
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002313- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2314 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2315 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002316
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002317- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002318 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2319 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002320
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002321- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2322 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002323
2324
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002325What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2326=================================
2327
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002328*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002329
2330Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002331-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002332
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002333- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2334 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2335 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2336
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002337- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2338 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2339 (SF patch #664376.)
2340
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002341- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2342 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2343 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2344 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2345 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2346 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002347 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002348
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002349- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2350 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2351 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2352 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002353 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002354
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002355- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2356 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2357 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2358 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2359 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2360 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2361 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2362 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2363 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2364 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2365 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2366
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002367- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2368 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2369 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2370 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2371 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2372 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2373
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002374- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2375 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2376
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002377- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2378 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2379 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2380 case.)
2381
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002382- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2383 passed as unicode strings.
2384
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002385- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2386 See SF bug #683467.
2387
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002388- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2389 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2390
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002391- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2392
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002393- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2394
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002395- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2396 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2397 arguments.
2398
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002399- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2400 See SF bug #667147.
2401
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002402- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002403 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002404 See SF bug #676155.
2405
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002406- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002407 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002408 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2409 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2410 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2411 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2412 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2413 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002414
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002415Extension modules
2416-----------------
2417
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002418- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2419 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2420 tp_as_number pointer.
2421
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002422- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2423 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2424 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2425 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2426 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2427
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002428- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2429
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002430- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2431
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002432- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002433 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002434 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2435 patch #678531.)
2436
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002437- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2438 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2439
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002440- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2441 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2442
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002443- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2444
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002445- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2446 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2447 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2448
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002449- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2450
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002451- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2452 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2453
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002454- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002455
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002456- datetime changes:
2457
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002458 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2459
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002460 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2461 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2462 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2463 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2464 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2465 now.
2466
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002467 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002468 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2469 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002470
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002471 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002472 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002473 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2474 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2475 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2476 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002477
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002478 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2479 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2480 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002481 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2482
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002483 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2484 by a later example coded by Guido.
2485
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002486 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002487 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2488 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2489 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002490 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2491 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2492
2493 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2494 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2495 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2496 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2497 tzinfo subclass instance.
2498
2499 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2500 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2501 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2502 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2503 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2504 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2505 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2506 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002507
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002508 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2509 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2510 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2511 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2512 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002513 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2514
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002515 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002516
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002517 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2518 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2519 as a naive datetime object.
2520
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002521 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2522 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2523 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2524
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002525 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2526 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2527 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2528 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2529 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2530 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2531 comparison.
2532
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002533 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2534 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2535 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2536 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002537 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002538
2539 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002540
2541 and ::
2542
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002543 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2544
2545 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2546 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2547 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2548 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2549
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002550 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2551 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2552 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2553 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2554 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2555
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002556 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2557 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002558 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2559 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002560
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002561Library
2562-------
2563
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002564- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2565 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2566
2567- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2568 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2569 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2570 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2571 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2572 See PEP 307 for details.
2573
2574- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2575 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2576
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002577- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2578 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002579 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002580 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2581 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002582 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002583
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002584- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2585 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2586
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002587- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2588 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2589 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2590
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002591- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2592
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002593- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2594 exception.
2595
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002596- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2597 class.
2598
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002599- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2600 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2601 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2602
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002603- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2604 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2605
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002606- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002607 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2608 See SF bug #659228.
2609
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002610- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2611 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2612 See SF patch #651082.
2613
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002614- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002615
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002616- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2617 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2618
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002619- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002620 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002621
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002622- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2623 DOS paths from other platforms.
2624
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002625Tools/Demos
2626-----------
2627
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002628- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2629 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2630 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2631 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2632 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2633 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2634 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2635 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2636 example:
2637
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002638 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2639 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002640
2641 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2642
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002643
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002644Build
2645-----
2646
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002647- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2648 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2649 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002650 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2651
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002652 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2653
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002654- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2655 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2656 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2657 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2658 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2659 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2660 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2661 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2662 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2663
2664- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2665 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2666 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2667 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2668
2669- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2670 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2671
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002672C API
2673-----
2674
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002675- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2676 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002677
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002678- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2679 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2680 tp_as_number pointer.
2681
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002682- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2683 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2684 (SF #681367)
2685
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002686- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2687 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2688 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2689 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002690
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002691Tests
2692-----
2693
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002694- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002695 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2696 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2697 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2698 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2699 pydoc.)
2700
2701- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2702
2703- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002704
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002705Windows
2706-------
2707
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002708- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2709 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2710 time).
2711
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002712- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2713 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2714
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002715- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2716 release without strong cryptography.
2717
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002718- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002719 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002720
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002721- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2722 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2723
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002724Mac
2725---
2726
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002727- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2728 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002729
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002730- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2731 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2732 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002733
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002734- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2735 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002736
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002737- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2738 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2739 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2740 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002741
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002742- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002743 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2744 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2745 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002746
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002747
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002748What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002749=================================
2750
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002751*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002752
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002753Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002754--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002755
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002756- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2757
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002758- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2759 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002760 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002761 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002762 a different meaning than before.
2763
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002764- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002765 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002766 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002767
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002768- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002769 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002770 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002771
2772- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2773 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2774 and deallocation.
2775
2776- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2777 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2778
2779- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2780 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2781 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2782 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2783 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2784
2785- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2786 now detected by the garbage collector.
2787
2788- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2789 [SF bug 519621]
2790
2791- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2792 identifier.
2793
2794- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2795 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2796 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2797 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2798 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2799 [SF bug 563060]
2800
2801- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2802 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2803 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2804 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2805 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2806
2807- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2808 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2809 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2810
2811- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2812
2813- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2814 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2815 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2816 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2817 state of the slots would be lost.)
2818
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002819Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002820-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002821
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002822- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002823 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
2824 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
2825 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
2826 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002827 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
2828 Jython 2.1.
2829
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002830- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002831 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002832 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
2833 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
2834 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
2835 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
2836 these, see PEP 302.
2837
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002838- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
2839 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2840 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2841
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002842- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2843 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2844 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2845
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002846- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2847 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2848 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2849
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002850- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2851 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2852 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2853 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2854 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2855 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2856 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2857 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2858 releases or implementations.
2859
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002860- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002861 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2862 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002863
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002864- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2865 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2866
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002867- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2868 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2869 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2870
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002871- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2872 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2873
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002874- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2875 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002876 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2877 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002878
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002879- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2880 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2881 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2882 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2883 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2884
2885 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2886 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2887 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2888 pattern.
2889
2890 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2891 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2892 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2893 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2894
2895 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2896 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2897 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2898 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2899 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2900 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2901
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002902- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2903 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2904 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2905 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2906 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
2907 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
2908 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
2909 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002910
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002911- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2912 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2913 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2914 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2915 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002916 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2917 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2918 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
2919 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
2920 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
2921 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
2922 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002923
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002924- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2925 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2926
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002927- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2928 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
2929 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
2930 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
2931 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
2932 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
2933 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
2934 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
2935 to Zack Weinberg!
2936
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00002937- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
2938 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
2939 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
2940 type. This has been fixed now.
2941
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00002942- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
2943 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
2944 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
2945
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002946- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
2947 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
2948 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
2949 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
2950 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
2951 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
2952 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
2953 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00002954 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002955
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00002956- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
2957 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
2958 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00002959
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002960- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
2961 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
2962 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
2963 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
2964 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
2965 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
2966 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
2967 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002968 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002969 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
2970 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
2971
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00002972- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
2973 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
2974 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
2975 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
2976 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
2977 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
2978 this.)
2979
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002980- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
2981 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002982 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002983 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002984 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
2985 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00002986 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
2987 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002988
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002989- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
2990 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
2991 currently running.
2992
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00002993- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
2994 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
2995 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
2996 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
2997
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00002998- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
2999 as directory names.
3000
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003001- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3002 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3003
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003004- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3005 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3006
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003007- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003008 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3009 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003010
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003011- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3012 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3013 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3014 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3015 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3016
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003017- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3018 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3019 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3020 removed.
3021
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003022- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3023 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3024 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3025
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003026- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3027 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3028 to __debug__.
3029
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003030- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3031 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3032 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3033
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003034- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3035 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3036 deprecated now.
3037
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003038- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3039 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3040 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003041
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003042- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3043 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3044 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3045 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3046 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003047
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003048- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3049 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3050
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003051- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3052 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3053 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003054 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003055 is backward compatible.
3056
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003057- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3058 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3059 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3060 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3061 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3062
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003063- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3064 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3065 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3066 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3067 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3068 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003069
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003070- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3071 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3072
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003073- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3074 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3075
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003076- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3077 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3078 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3079 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3080 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3081
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003082- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3083 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3084 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3085
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003086- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003087 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3088
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003089- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3090 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3091 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003092
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003093- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3094 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3095
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003096- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3097 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3098 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3099
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003100- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3101
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003102Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003103-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003104
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003105- Added three operators to the operator module:
3106 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3107 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3108 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3109
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003110- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3111
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003112- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3113 archives.
3114
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003115- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3116 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3117 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3118
3119 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3120
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003121- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3122 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3123 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003124 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003125
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003126- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3127 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3128 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3129 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003130 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3131 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3132 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3133 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003134
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003135- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3136 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003137
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003138- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3139
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003140- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3141 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3142
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003143- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3144 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3145 supported.
3146
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003147- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3148
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003149- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3150 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003151
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003152- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3153 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3154
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003155- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3156
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003157- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3158 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3159
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003160- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3161 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3162 functions but callable type objects.
3163
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003164- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003165 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003166 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003167
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003168- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3169 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003170
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003171- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3172 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003173
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003174- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3175 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3176 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3177 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3178
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003179- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3180 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003181
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003182- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3183 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3184 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3185 and __imul__.
3186
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003187- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003188 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3189 is called.
3190
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003191- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3192 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3193 interpreter was compiled.
3194
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003195- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3196 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3197 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003198 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003199 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3200 1, not 2.
3201
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003202- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3203 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3204 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3205 limit.
3206
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003207- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3208 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3209 bug #623464.
3210
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003211- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3212 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3213 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3214 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3215
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003216Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003217-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003218
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003219- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3220
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003221- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3222 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3223 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3224 with Python 2.3a2.
3225
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003226- os.path exposes getctime.
3227
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003228- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003229 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003230 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003231 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003232 unit tests of floating point results.
3233
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003234- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3235 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3236 has been increased.
3237
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003238- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3239 executed.
3240
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003241- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3242 postinstallation script.
3243
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003244- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3245 test the current module.
3246
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003247- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003248 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3249 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3250 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3251 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3252
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003253- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003254 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003255 Ward's Optik package.
3256
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003257- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3258 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3259 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3260 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3261
3262- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3263 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003264 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003265
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003266- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3267 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3268 shelf are binary pickles.
3269
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003270- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3271 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3272
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003273- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3274 modules are iterators now.
3275
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003276- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3277 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3278 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3279 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3280 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3281 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003282
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003283- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3284 with their entity value.
3285
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003286- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3287
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003288- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3289 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003290
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003291- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3292 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003293 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003294
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003295- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3296 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3297 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3298 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3299 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3300 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3301 main():
3302
3303 import locale
3304 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3305
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003306- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3307 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3308
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003309- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3310 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3311 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3312 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3313 to the new standard.
3314
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003315- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3316 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3317 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3318 an extension to the database.
3319
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003320- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3321 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3322 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3323 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003324 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003325
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003326- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003327 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003328
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003329- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3330 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3331 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3332 bounded integers.
3333
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003334- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3335 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3336 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3337 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3338 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3339 in existence.
3340
3341 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3342 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3343 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3344 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3345 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3346 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3347
3348 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3349 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3350 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3351 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3352
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003353- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3354 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3355 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3356
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003357- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3358
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003359- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3360 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3361 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3362 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3363
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003364- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3365 argument.
3366
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003367- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3368 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3369 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3370 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3371 [SF patch 560794].
3372
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003373- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3374 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3375 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003376 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3377 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3378 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003379
3380- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3381 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003382
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003383- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3384 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3385 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3386 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003387
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003388- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3389 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3390 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3391 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3392 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3393
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003394- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003395
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003396- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3397
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003398- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3399 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3400 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3401 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3402 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3403 identical to None.
3404
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003405- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3406 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3407 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3408 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3409 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3410 results now.
3411
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003412- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3413 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3414
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003415- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3416 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3417 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3418 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3419 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3420 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3421 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3422 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3423
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003424- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3425
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003426- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3427 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3428
3429- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3430 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3431 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3432 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3433 and other systems.
3434
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003435- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3436 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3437 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3438 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 +00003439 work well with these.
3440
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003441- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3442
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003443- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003444 connections.
3445
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003446- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3447 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3448 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3449
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003450- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3451 sets
3452
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003453- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3454 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3455 name.
3456
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003457- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3458 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3459 passed in.
3460
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003461- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003462 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003463 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3464 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003465
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003466- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3467
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003468- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3469
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003470- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3471 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3472 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3473
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003474- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3475 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3476 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3477 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003478 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003479
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003480- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003481 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003482 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003483
3484- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3485 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3486 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3487
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003488- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003489 the value of its expression argument.
3490
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003491- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3492 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3493 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3494
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003495- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3496 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3497 skipstone browser was included.
3498
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003499- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3500 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3501
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003502Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003503-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003504
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003505- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3506 names in addition to accepting file names.
3507
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003508- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3509 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3510 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3511 still used and useful.)
3512
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003513- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3514 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3515 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3516 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003517
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003518- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3519 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3520 the generated binary.
3521
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003522Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003523-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003524
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003525- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3526
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003527- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3528 except in the hands of experts.
3529
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003530- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003531 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3532 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3533 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003534
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003535- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3536 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3537 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3538 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3539 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3540 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3541 builds.
3542
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003543- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3544 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3545 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3546 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3547 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3548 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3549 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3550 new type.
3551
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003552- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003553
3554 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3555 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3556 positive infinities.
3557
3558 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3559 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3560 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3561 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3562 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3563 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3564 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3565
3566 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3567
3568 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3569
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003570- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3571 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3572 size of the executable.
3573
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003574- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3575 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3576 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3577 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003578
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003579- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3580
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003581- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3582 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3583 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003584
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003585- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3586 well as Unix.
3587
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003588- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3589 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3590 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3591 modules in the README file for details.
3592
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003593C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003594-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003595
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003596- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3597 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003598 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003599 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003600 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003601
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003602- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3603 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3604 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3605 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3606 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3607 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003608 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003609 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3610 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3611 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3612 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3613 aligned.)
3614
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003615- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3616 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3617 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3618
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003619- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3620 level.
3621
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003622- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3623 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3624 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3625 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3626 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3627
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003628- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3629 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3630 code.
3631
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003632- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3633 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3634 adjusting for negative indices.
3635
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003636- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3637 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3638 object.
3639
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003640- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3641 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3642 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3643
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003644- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3645 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003646
3647- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3648
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003649- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3650 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3651 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3652 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3653
3654- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3655
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003656- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003657
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003658- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003659 without going through the buffer API.
3660
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003661- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003662
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003663- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3664 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3665 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3666 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3667
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003668- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3669 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3670
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003671- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003672 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3673
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003674New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003675-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003676
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003677- OpenVMS is now supported.
3678
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003679- AtheOS is now supported.
3680
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003681- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3682
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003683- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3684
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003685Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003686-----
3687
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003688- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3689 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3690 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003691
3692Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003693-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003694
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003695- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3696 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3697 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3698 bugs.
3699 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003700 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003701 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3702 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003703 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003704
3705- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003706 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003707
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003708- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3709 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3710
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003711- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3712 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003713 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003714 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3715
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003716- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3717 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3718 use files" uninstall option).
3719
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003720- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3721
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003722- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3723 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3724
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003725- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3726 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3727 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3728
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003729- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3730 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3731 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3732 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3733 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003734 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3735 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3736 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003737
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003738- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003739 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003740 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3741 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3742 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3743 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3744 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3745 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3746 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3747 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3748 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3749 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3750 work around.
3751
3752- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3753 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3754 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3755 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3756 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3757 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3758 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3759 specified with O_CREAT too).
3760
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003761Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003762----
3763
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003764- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003765
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003766- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3767 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3768 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3769
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003770- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3771 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3772 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3773
3774- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3775 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3776 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3777 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3778 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3779 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3780 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3781 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003782
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003783- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3784 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3785 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003786
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003787- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3788 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3789 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3790 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3791 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003792
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003793- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3794 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3795 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003796
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003797- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3798 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003799
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003800- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3801 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3802 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3803 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3804 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003805
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003806- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3807 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3808 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3809
3810- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3811 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3812 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003813
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003814- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3815 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3816 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3817 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003818 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003819
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003820- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
3821 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003822
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003823- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
3824 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003825
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003826- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00003827 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003828 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
3829 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003830
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003831
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003832What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003833===============================
3834
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003835*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
3836
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003837Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003838--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003839
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003840- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3841 with a custom metaclass.
3842
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003843Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003844-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003845
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003846- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3847 are proxies.
3848
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003849Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003850-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003851
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003852- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3853 very short strings.
3854
3855- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3856 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3857 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3858 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3859 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3860
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003861Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003862-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003863
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003864- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3865 close or delete time).
3866
3867- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3868 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3869
3870- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3871
3872- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003873 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003874
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003875Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003876-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003877
3878Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003879-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003880
3881C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003882-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003883
3884New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003885-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003886
3887Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003888-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003889
3890Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003891-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003892
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003893- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3894
3895- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3896 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3897
3898- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3899 deleted at process exit time.
3900
3901- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3902 in backslash.
3903
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003904Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003905----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003906
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003907- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
3908 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
3909 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3910
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003911
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003912What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003913===========================
3914
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003915*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3916
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003917Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003918--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003919
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003920- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
3921 been extensively updated. See
3922
3923 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3924
3925 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3926
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003927- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3928 deleted!
3929
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00003930- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
3931 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
3932 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
3933 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
3934 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
3935
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003936- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
3937
3938 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
3939 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
3940
3941 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
3942 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
3943 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
3944 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
3945 supported anyway.
3946
3947 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
3948 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
3949
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00003950- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
3951 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
3952 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
3953 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
3954 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003955
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00003956- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
3957 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
3958 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
3959
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003960Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003961-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003962
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003963- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
3964 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
3965 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
3966 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
3967 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
3968 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00003969 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
3970 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
3971 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
3972 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003973
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00003974- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
3975 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
3976 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
3977
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003978Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003979-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003980
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003981- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
3982
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003983Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003984-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003985
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00003986- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
3987 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
3988 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
3989 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
3990 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
3991 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
3992
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00003993- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
3994
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00003995- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
3996
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00003997- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
3998
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003999- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4000 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4001 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4002
4003- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4004
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004005Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004006-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004007
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004008- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4009 off a search on Google.
4010
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004011Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004012-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004013
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004014- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4015 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4016 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4017 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4018 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4019 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4020 other platforms should do likewise.
4021
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004022- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4023 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4024 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4025
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004026C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004027-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004028
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004029- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4030 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4031 producing key-value pairs.
4032
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004033- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004034 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004035 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4036 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4037 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4038 previously went unchallenged.
4039
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004040New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004041-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004042
4043Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004044-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004045
4046Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004047-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004048
4049Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004050----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004051
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004052- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4053 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004054
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004055- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4056 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4057 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4058 home.
4059
4060
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004061What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004062===========================
4063
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004064*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4065
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004066Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004067--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004068
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004069- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4070 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004071
4072 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004073 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004074
4075 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4076 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004077 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004078 This needs to be documented.
4079
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004080- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4081 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4082
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004083- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4084 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4085 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4086
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004087- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4088 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4089
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004090- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4091 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4092 class forbids it).
4093
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004094- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4095 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4096 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4097
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004098- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4099
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004100Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004101-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004102
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004103- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4104 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004105 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004106
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004107- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4108 (like 1 + '').
4109
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004110Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004111-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004112
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004113- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4114 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4115 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4116 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004117 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004118 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4119
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004120- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4121 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4122 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4123 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4124
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004125- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4126 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004127 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4128 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4129 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004130
4131- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4132 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004133
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004134- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4135 bytes on its input.
4136
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004137Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004138-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004139
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004140- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004141 convenience function.
4142
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004143- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4144 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4145 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004146 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4147 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4148 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4149 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4150 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4151 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004152
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004153- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4154 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4155 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4156 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4157
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004158- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4159 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4160 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4161
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004162- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4163 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4164 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4165 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4166
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004167- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4168 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004169 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004170 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4171 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4172 new -l and -e options.
4173
4174- statcache is now deprecated.
4175
4176- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4177 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004178 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004179 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4180 time properly taken into account.
4181
4182- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4183 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4184 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4185 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4186
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004187Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004188-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004189
4190Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004191-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004192
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004193- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4194 is built with libdb3 if available.
4195
4196- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4197
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004198C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004199-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004200
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004201- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4202 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4203 PySequence_Size().
4204
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004205- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4206
4207- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4208 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4209 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4210
4211- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4212 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4213
4214- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4215 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4216
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004217New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004218-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004219
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004220- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4221 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4222
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004223- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4224 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4225
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004226- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4227
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004228Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004229-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004230
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004231- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4232 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4233
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004234Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004235-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004236
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004237Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004238----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004239
4240- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4241 removed completely in the next release.
4242
4243- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4244 OSX.
4245
4246- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4247 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4248
4249- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4250
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004251
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004252What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004253===========================
4254
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004255*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4256
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004257Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004258--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004259
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004260- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004261 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004262 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004263 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4264 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004265 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4266 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004267 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4268 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004269
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004270- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4271 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4272
4273- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4274 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4275
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004276Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004277-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004278
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004279- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4280 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4281 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4282 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4283 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4284 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4285 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4286 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4287
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004288- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4289 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4290 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4291 example).
4292
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004293- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004294 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004295 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004296 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004297
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004298- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4299 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4300 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004301 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004302
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004303- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4304 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4305 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4306 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4307 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4308 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4309
4310 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4311
4312 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4313
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004314Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004315-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004316
4317- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4318
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004319- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4320
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004321- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4322 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004323
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004324- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4325 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4326 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4327 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4328 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4329 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004330 attributes.
4331
4332- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4333 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4334 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004335
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004336- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4337 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4338 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004339
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004340- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4341 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4342 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004343 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4344 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4345
4346- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4347 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004348
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004349Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004350-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004351
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004352- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4353 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4354
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004355- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4356 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4357 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4358 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4359
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004360- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4361 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4362 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4363 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4364
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004365 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4366 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4367 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4368 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4369 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4370 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4371 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4372 without losing information).
4373
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004374- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004375 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4376 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4377 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4378 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4379 module).
4380
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004381 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004382 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4383 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4384 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4385 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004386
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004387- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004388 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4389 encoding.
4390
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004391- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4392 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4393
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004394- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004395 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4396
4397- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4398 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4399 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4400 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4401
4402- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4403
4404- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4405 ON, and OFF.
4406
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004407- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4408 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4409
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004410Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004411-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004412
4413- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4414 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4415 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004416
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004417- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4418 been added: -X and -E.
4419
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004420Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004421-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004422
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004423- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4424 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4425
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004426C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004427-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004428
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004429- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4430 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4431 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4432 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4433 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4434
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004435- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4436 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4437 as long) arguments.
4438
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004439- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4440 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4441 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4442 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4443 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4444 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4445
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004446- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4447 input.
4448
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004449New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004450-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004451
4452Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004453-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004454
4455Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004456-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004457
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004458- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4459 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4460 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4461
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004462- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4463 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4464 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004465 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004466
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004467 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4468 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4469 import signal
4470 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004471
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004472 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004473 while 1:
4474 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004475 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004476 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4477 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4478 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4479 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004480
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004481
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004482What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4483===========================
4484
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004485*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4486
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004487Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004488--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004489
4490- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4491 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4492 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4493
4494- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4495 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4496 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4497 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4498 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4499 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4500 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004501
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004502- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004503 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004504 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4505 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4506 associate a docstring with a property.
4507
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004508- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4509 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4510 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4511 other built-in object types.
4512
4513- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4514 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4515 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4516 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4517 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4518
4519- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4520 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4521
4522- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4523 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004524 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004525 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4526 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4527 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4528 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4529 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4530
4531- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4532 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4533 class.
4534
4535- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4536 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4537 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4538 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4539
4540- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4541 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4542 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4543 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4544
4545- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4546 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4547
4548- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4549 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4550 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4551 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4552 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004553 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004554 with the same value as s.
4555
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004556- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4557
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004558Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004559----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004560
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004561- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4562
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004563- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4564 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4565 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4566 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4567 objects.
4568
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004569- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4570 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004571 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4572 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4573
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004574- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4575 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4576 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4577
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004578Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004579-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004580
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004581- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4582 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4583 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4584 by the instances.
4585
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004586- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4587 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4588 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4589
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004590- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4591 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4592 before the entire comparison is complete.
4593
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004594- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4595 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4596 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4597
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004598- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4599 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4600 getwriter().
4601
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004602- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4603 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4604
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004605- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004606 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4607 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4608
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004609- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4610 iterable object.
4611
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004612- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4613 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004614
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004615- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4616 authentication.
4617
4618- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4619 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004620
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004621- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004622 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4623 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4624 a sample driver.)
4625
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004626Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004627-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004628
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004629- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4630 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4631 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4632 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4633 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4634 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4635 kernel has large file support.
4636
4637- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4638 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4639 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4640 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4641 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4642
4643- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4644 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4645 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4646
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004647C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004648-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004649
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004650- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4651 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4652
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004653New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004654-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004655
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004656- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4657 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4658
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004659Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004660-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004661
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004662- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4663 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4664 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4665 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4666 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4667
4668- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4669 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4670 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4671 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4672
4673- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4674 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4675
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004676Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004677-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004678
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004679- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004680 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4681 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004682
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004683
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004684What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4685===========================
4686
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004687*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4688
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004689Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004690----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004691
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004692- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4693 big to represent as a C double.
4694
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004695- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4696 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4697 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4698 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4699 restriction).
4700
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004701- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4702 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4703 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4704 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4705 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4706
4707 >>> dir([])
4708 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4709 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4710 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4711 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4712 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4713 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4714 'reverse', 'sort']
4715
4716 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4717
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004718- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004719 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4720 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4721 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4722 OverflowError exception.
4723
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004724- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004725 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004726 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4727 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4728 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4729 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4730 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004731 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004732 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4733 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4734
4735 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4736 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4737 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4738 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004739
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004740- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004741 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4742 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4743 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4744 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4745 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4746 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4747 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4748 once it is created.
4749
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004750- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4751 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4752 (key, value) pairs.
4753
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004754- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004755 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4756 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4757
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004758- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4759 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4760 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4761 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4762 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004763
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004764- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004765 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4766 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4767
4768 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4769
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004770- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004771 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4772
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004773Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004774-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004775
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004776- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004777 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4778 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004779
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004780- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4781 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4782 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4783 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4784 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4785 in this area anymore).
4786
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004787- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4788 threading.Timer.
4789
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004790- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4791 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4792
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004793- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004794 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4795
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004796- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004797 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4798 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4799 converted to Python longs.
4800
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004801- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004802 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4803
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004804- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4805 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4806 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4807
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004808Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004809-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004810
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004811- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4812 division operators as per PEP 238.
4813
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004814Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004815-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004816
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004817- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4818 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4819 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
4820 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
4821
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004822C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004823-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004824
4825- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004826
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004827- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
4828 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004829 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004830
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004831 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
4832 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004833 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004834 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004835
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004836- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004837 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
4838 module:
4839
4840 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004841
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004842 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4843 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004844
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004845 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4846 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004847
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004848 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4849
4850 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4851
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004852- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004853 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4854 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4855 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004856
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004857New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004858-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004859
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004860- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4861 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4862 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4863 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4864 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004865
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004866Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004867-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004868
4869Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004870-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004871
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004872- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4873 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4874 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4875 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004876 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4877 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4878 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4879 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4880 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004881
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004882- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004883 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4884
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004885
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004886What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4887===========================
4888
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004889*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4890
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004891Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004892-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004893
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004894- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4895 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4896
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004897- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4898 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4899 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004900
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004901- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4902 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4903 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4904 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004905
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004906- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
4907
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004908- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004909
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004910Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004911-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004912
4913- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004914 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004915 the module docstring for details.
4916
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004917Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004918-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004919
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004920- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004921 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
4922 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4923 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004924
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004925- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4926 Nick Mathewson.
4927
4928Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004929----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004930
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004931- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
4932 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
4933 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
4934 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
4935 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
4936 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
4937 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
4938 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
4939
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00004940- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
4941 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
4942 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
4943 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
4944
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00004945- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
4946 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
4947 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
4948 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
4949 come a long way).
4950
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004951- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
4952 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
4953 write filters for these warnings).
4954
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00004955- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
4956 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
4957 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
4958 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
4959 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
4960
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00004961- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
4962 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
4963 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
4964 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
4965 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
4966 older distribution.
4967
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004968Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004969-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004970
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004971- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
4972 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004973 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004974
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004975- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
4976 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
4977 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
4978
4979- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
4980
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004981- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
4982
4983- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
4984
4985- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
4986
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004987- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004988
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004989- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
4990
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004991New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004992-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004993
4994C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004995-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004996
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004997- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
4998 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
4999 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5000 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5001 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5002 against buffer overruns.
5003
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005004- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005005 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5006 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005007 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5008 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5009 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5010
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005011- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5012 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5013 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5014 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5015 deprecated.
5016
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005017Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005018-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005019
5020- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5021 relevant is found.
5022
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005023
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005024What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005025===========================
5026
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005027*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5028
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005029Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005030----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005031
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005032- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5033 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5034 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5035 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5036 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5037 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5038 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5039 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005040 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005041 repaired.
5042
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005043- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005044 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005045 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5046 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5047 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5048 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5049 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5050 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5051 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5052 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5053
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005054- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5055 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5056 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5057 leading BMO character).
5058
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005059- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5060 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5061 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5062
5063 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5064 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5065 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005066
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005067 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5068 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5069 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5070 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5071 for various simple to use conversions.
5072
5073 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5074 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5075
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005076 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5077 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5078 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5079 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5080 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5081 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5082 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5083 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5084 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5085 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5086 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5087 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5088 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5089 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5090 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005091
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005092- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5093 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5094 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005095 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005096 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005097
5098 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005099 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5100 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5101 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5102 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5103 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005104 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5105 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005106
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005107 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5108 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5109 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005110 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005111
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005112- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5113 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5114 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5115 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5116 floating arithmetic,
5117
5118 x = 9007199254740992.0
5119 print long(x)
5120
5121 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5122 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5123 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5124 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5125 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5126 functions are of good quality).
5127
5128 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5129 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5130 algorithms to break.
5131
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005132- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5133 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5134 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5135 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5136 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5137 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5138 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5139 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5140 order.
5141
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005142- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5143 operation along the most common code paths.
5144
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005145- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5146 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5147
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005148- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5149 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5150 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5151 {}.update(UserDict())
5152
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005153- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5154 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5155 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5156 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5157 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5158 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5159 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5160 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5161
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005162- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005163 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005164
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005165 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005166 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5167 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005168 join() method of strings
5169 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005170 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5171 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005172 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005173 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005174
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005175- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5176 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5177
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005178- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5179 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5180
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005181- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5182 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5183 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5184 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5185
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005186- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5187 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005188 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005189 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5190 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005191
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005192- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5193
5194
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005195Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005196-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005197
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005198- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005199 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005200 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5201 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5202
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005203- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5204 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5205
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005206- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5207 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5208 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5209 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5210
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005211- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5212 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5213 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5214
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005215- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5216
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005217- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5218
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005219- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5220 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5221 that are still imported into string.py).
5222
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005223- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5224
5225- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5226 Now it does.
5227
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005228- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5229
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005230- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5231 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5232 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5233 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5234 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005235 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5236 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005237
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005238- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5239 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5240 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5241 'help(object)'.
5242
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005243Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005244-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005245
5246- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005247 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005248 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5249 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5250
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005251- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005252 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5253 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005254
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005255C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005256-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005257
5258- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5259 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005260
5261----
5262
5263**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**