blob: d0a8118caed811936abb38bfa7f890ef31ab99aa [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
10Core and builtins
11-----------------
12
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +000013- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
14
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +000015- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
16 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
17
Martin v. Löwis13a1fde2005-01-27 18:56:16 +000018- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +000019 an ferror() call.
20
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000021- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
22 list.sort().
23
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +000024- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
25 (2+3) --> (5).
26
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +000027- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
28
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +000029- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
30 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000031
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +000032- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
33 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
34 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
35
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000036Extension Modules
37-----------------
38
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +000039- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
40 file size.
41
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +000042- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
43
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +000044- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
45 {remove_history,replace_history}
46
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +000047- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
48 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +000049
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +000050- stat_float_times is now True.
51
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +000052- array.array objects are now picklable.
53
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +000054- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
55 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
56
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +000057- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
58 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
59 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
60
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +000061- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
62 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000063
64Library
65-------
66
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +000067- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
68 profile.py if available.
69
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +000070- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
71
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +000072- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
73 in LWPCookieJar.
74
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +000075- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
76
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +000077- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
78
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +000079- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
80
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +000081- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
82
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +000083- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
84
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +000085- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
86
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +000087- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
88
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +000089- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
90
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +000091- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
92 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
93 be exploited in various ways.
94
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +000095- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
96
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +000097- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
98
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +000099- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
100
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000101- Enhancements to the csv module:
102
103 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
104 reflecting it's capabilities, and improving it's compliance with
105 PEP 305.
106 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
107 reporting.
108 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
109 dictates.
110 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000111 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000112 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000113 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
114 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000115 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
116 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000117 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000118 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
119 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
120 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
121 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
122 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
123 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
124 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
125 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
126 without first creating a dialect class.
127 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
128 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
129 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000130 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000131 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
132 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000133 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
134 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
135 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
136 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000137 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
138 This has been fixed.
139
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000140- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
141 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
142 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
143 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
144
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000145- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
146
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000147- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
148 (Bug #951915).
149
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000150- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
151 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
152 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
153 encoding alias table
154
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000155- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
156
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000157- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
158 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
159
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000160- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
161
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000162- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
163
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000164- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
165
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000166- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
167
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000168- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
169
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000170- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
171 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
172 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
173
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000174- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000175 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000176
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000177- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
178 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
179 tokenizer with very long source lines.
180
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000181- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
182 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
183
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000184- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
185 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000186
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000187- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
188 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
189
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000190Build
191-----
192
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000193- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
194 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
195
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000196- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
197 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
198 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
199 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
200 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
201 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
202 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
203 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
204
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000205- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
206 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
207 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
208 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
209
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000210
211C API
212-----
213
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000214- Removed PyRange_New().
215
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000216
217Tests
218-----
219
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000220- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000221
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000222
223Documentation
224-------------
225
226- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
227 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
228 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
229
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000230Mac
231---
232
233
234
235Tools/Demos
236-----------
237
238
239
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000240What's New in Python 2.4 final?
241===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000242
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000243*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000244
245Core and builtins
246-----------------
247
248- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
249 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
250 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
251
252
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000253What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
254==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000255
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000256*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000257
258Core and builtins
259-----------------
260
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000261- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
262 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
263 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
264
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000265
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000266Library
267-------
268
269- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
270 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
271 raised is re-raised.
272
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000273- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
274 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
275
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000276- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
277 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
278 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
279 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
280 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
281 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
282 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
283 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
284 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
285 by the slice are recomputed now.
286
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000287- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000288
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000289Build
290-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000291
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000292- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
293 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
294 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000295
296C API
297-----
298
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000299- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
300
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000301
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000302What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
303================================
304
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000305*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000306
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000307License
308-------
309
310The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
311is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
312changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
313Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
314intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
315durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
316the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
317License::
318
319 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
320
321says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
322to Python 2.1.1.
323
324The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
325License Version 2.
326
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000327Core and builtins
328-----------------
329
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000330- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
331 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
332 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
333 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
334 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
335 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
336 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
337 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
338 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
339 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
340
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000341- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000342
343Extension Modules
344-----------------
345
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000346- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
347 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
348 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
349 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000350
351Library
352-------
353
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000354- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
355 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
356 returned.
357
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000358- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
359
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000360- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
361 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
362
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000363- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
364
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000365- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
366 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000367
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000368- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
369
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000370- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
371
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000372- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000373 the source code is updated and reloaded.
374
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000375Build
376-----
377
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000378- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000379
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000380What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
381================================
382
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000383*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000384
385Core and builtins
386-----------------
387
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000388- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000389 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
390
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000391- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
392 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
393 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
394 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
395
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000396- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
397 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
398
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000399- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
400 constant.
401
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000402- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
403 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
404 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
405 large), and to anomalies such as
406 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
407 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
408 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
409 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000410
411Extension modules
412-----------------
413
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000414- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
415 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000416 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
417 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
418 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000419
420Library
421-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000422
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000423- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000424 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000425 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
426 --swig-cpp.
427
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000428- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
429 it is set.
430
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000431- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000432
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000433- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
434 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
435 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
436 Closes bug #1039270.
437
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000438- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000439
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000440 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000441 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
442 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
443 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
444 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
445 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
446 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
447 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
448 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
449 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
450 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
451 + Updates to documentation.
452
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000453- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
454 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
455 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
456 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
457
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000458- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000459
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000460- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
461 applications should use the getmember function.
462
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000463- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
464
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000465- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
466 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
467 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
468 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
469 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
470 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
471 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
472 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
473 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
474
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000475- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
476 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000477 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000478
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000479- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
480 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
481 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
482 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
483 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
484 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
485 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
486 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000487
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000488- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
489 the new public features (of which there are many).
490
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000491- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000492 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
493 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
494 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
495 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000496 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000497
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000498- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
499
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000500- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
501 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
502 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
503 options.
504
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000505- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
506 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
507 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
508 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
509 conditions under which non-string values work.
510
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000511Build
512-----
513
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000514- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
515 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
516 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
517
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000518- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
519 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
520 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
521 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
522 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000523
524C API
525-----
526
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000527- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
528 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
529
530- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
531
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000532- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
533 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
534 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
535 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
536 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
537 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
538 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
539 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
540 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
541
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000542- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
543
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000544- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
545 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
546 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000547
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000548Tests
549-----
550
551- test__locale ported to unittest
552
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000553Mac
554---
555
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000556- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
557 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
558 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000559
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000560Tools/Demos
561-----------
562
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000563- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
564 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
565 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
566 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
567 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000568
569
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000570What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
571=================================
572
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000573*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000574
575Core and builtins
576-----------------
577
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000578- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000579 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
580
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000581- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
582 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
583 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
584 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
585 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
586 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
587 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
588 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000589 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
590 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
591 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
592 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
593 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000594
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000595- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
596 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
597 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
598 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
599 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
600
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000601- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
602
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000603- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
604 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
605
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000606- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
607 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
608 modified the list.
609
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000610- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
611 functions is now writable.
612
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000613- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
614 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
615 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
616 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
617
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000618- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
619 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
620 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
621 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
622 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000623
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000624- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
625 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
626
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000627Extension modules
628-----------------
629
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000630- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
631
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000632- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
633 data.
634
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000635- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
636 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
637 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
638 supposed to have been truncated away.
639
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000640- Added socket.socketpair().
641
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000642- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
643 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
644
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000645- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000646 versions of Python, have now been removed.
647
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000648Library
649-------
650
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000651- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000652 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000653
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000654- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
655 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
656
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000657- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
658 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
659
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000660- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
661
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000662- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
663 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000664
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000665- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
666 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
667
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000668- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
669
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000670- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
671
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000672- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
673
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000674- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
675 Percivall.
676
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000677- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
678 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
679
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000680- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
681 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
682 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000683 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000684
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000685- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
686 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
687 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
688 and exponent.
689
690- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
691
692- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
693 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
694 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
695
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000696- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
697 to the readline module.
698
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000699- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000700 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
701 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000702
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000703- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
704 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
705 contains symlinks.
706
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000707- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
708 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
709
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000710- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
711 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
712 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
713
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000714- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
715 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
716 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
717 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
718 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
719 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
720 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
721 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
722 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
723 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
724 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
725 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
726 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
727
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000728- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
729
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000730Tools/Demos
731-----------
732
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000733- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
734 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
735
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000736- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
737
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000738Build
739-----
740
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000741- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
742 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
743 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
744 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
745 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
746 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
747 plans to do so.
748
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000749- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
750 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
751
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000752- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
753 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
754
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000755- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
756 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
757
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000758- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
759 GNU/k*BSD systems.
760
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000761- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
762 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
763
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000764C API
765-----
766
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000767..
768
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000769Documentation
770-------------
771
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000772- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
773 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
774
775- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
776 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
777 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000778
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000779New platforms
780-------------
781
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000782- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
783
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000784Tests
785-----
786
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000787..
788
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000789Windows
790-------
791
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000792- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
793 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
794 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
795 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
796 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
797 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
798 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
799 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
800 the problem.
801
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000802Mac
803---
804
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000805..
806
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000807
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000808What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
809=================================
810
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000811*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000812
813Core and builtins
814-----------------
815
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000816- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
817 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
818 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
819 sensitive code.
820
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000821- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000822 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000823
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000824 @staticmethod
825 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000826
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000827 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000828
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000829- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
830 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
831 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
832 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
833 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
834 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
835 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
836 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
837 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
838 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
839 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
840
841 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
842 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
843 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
844 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
845 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
846 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
847 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
848
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000849- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
850 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
851
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000852- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000853 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000854
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000855- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000856 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000857 which was missing for no apparent reason.
858
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000859- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000860 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
861 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
862
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000863- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
864 types that support garbage collection.
865
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000866- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
867
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000868- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
869 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
870 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
871 Jython.
872
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000873- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
874
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000875- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
876 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
877
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000878- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
879 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
880 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000881
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000882- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
883 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
884 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
885
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000886Extension modules
887-----------------
888
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000889- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
890
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000891Library
892-------
893
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000894- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
895 TIS-620
896
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000897- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
898 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
899 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
900 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
901 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
902 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
903 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
904 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
905 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
906 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
907
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000908- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
909
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000910- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
911 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
912 same as when the argument is omitted).
913 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
914
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000915- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
916
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000917- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
918 schemes are offered.
919
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000920- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
921
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000922- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
923 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
924 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
925
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000926- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
927
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000928- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
929 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
930
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000931- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
932 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
933 when dummy_threading is being used.
934
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000935- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
936 from a tarfile.
937
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000938- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000939 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000940
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000941- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
942 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
943 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
944 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
945
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000946- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
947 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
948
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000949- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
950 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
951 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
952 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
953 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
954 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
955 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
956 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
957 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
958 by some other method in progress).
959
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000960- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
961 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
962 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000963
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000964- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
965
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000966- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
967 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
968 AM Kuchling.
969
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000970- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
971 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
972 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
973
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000974- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
975 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
976 instead of unsigned.
977
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000978- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000979 no longer part of the public API.
980
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000981- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
982 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
983 string methods of the same name).
984
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000985- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000986 SF patch 945642.
987
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000988- doctest unittest integration improvements:
989
990 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
991
992 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
993 DocTestSuites.
994
995- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
996 that provide thread-local data.
997
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000998- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
999 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1000
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001001- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1002
1003- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1004 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1005 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1006
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001007- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1008
1009 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1010 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1011 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001012
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001013 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1014 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1015 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1016 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1017
1018 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1019 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1020
1021 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1022 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1023 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1024 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1025
1026 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1027 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1028 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1029 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1030 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1031
1032 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1033 wrapping help output.
1034
1035 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1036 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1037 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001038
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001039C API
1040-----
1041
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001042- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1043 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1044 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1045 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1046 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1047 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1048 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1049 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1050 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1051 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1052 its visible semantics have not changed.
1053
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001054- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1055 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1056
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001057Documentation
1058-------------
1059
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001060- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001061
1062 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001063 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001064
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001065 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001066
1067 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1068
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001069- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001070
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001071Tests
1072-----
1073
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001074- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001075 platforms that use the Makefile.
1076
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001077- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1078 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1079 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1080
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001081
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001082What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1083=================================
1084
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001085*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001086
1087Core and builtins
1088-----------------
1089
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001090- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1091 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1092 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1093 objects now (one object instead of three).
1094
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001095- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1096 Windows DLLs.
1097
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001098- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1099 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001100
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001101- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1102 a new .pyc magic.
1103
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001104- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1105 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1106 be there.
1107
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001108- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1109 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1110 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1111
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001112- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1113 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1114 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1115
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001116- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1117
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001118- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1119 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1120 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001121
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001122- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1123 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1124
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001125- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1126
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001127- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001128 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001129
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001130- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1131
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001132- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1133
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001134- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1135 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1136
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001137- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1138 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1139 Fixes bug #858016 .
1140
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001141- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1142 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1143 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1144
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001145- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1146 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1147 improves their performance (about 35%).
1148
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001149- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1150 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1151 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1152
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001153- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1154 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1155 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1156 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1157
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001158- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1159 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
1160 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
1161 length is not known).
1162
1163- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1164 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001165 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1166 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001167 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1168
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001169- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1170 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1171
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001172- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1173 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1174 keyword arguments.
1175
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001176- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1177 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1178 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1179
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001180- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1181 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1182 cases.
1183
1184- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1185 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1186 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1187 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1188 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1189 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1190 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1191 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1192 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1193 a release build.
1194
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001195- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1196 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1197
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001198- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001199 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001200
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001201- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1202 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1203 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1204 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1205 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1206 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1207 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1208 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1209 destroyed.
1210
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001211- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1212 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1213 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1214 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1215 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1216 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1217 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1218 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1219
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001220- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1221 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1222 character other than a space.
1223
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001224- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1225 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1226 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1227 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1228 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1229 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1230 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1231 attributes with the same name.
1232
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001233- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1234 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1235 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1236 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1237 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1238 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1239 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1240 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1241 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1242 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1243 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1244 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1245 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1246 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001247
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001248- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1249 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1250 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1251 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1252 This has been repaired.
1253
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001254- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1255
1256- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1257
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001258- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1259 over a sequence.
1260
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001261- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001262 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001263
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001264- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1265
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001266- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1267 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1268 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1269 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1270 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1271 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1272 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1273 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1274
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001275- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1276 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1277 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1278
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001279- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1280 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1281 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1282 freelist.
1283
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001284- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1285 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1286
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001287- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1288 number.
1289
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001290- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1291 a TypeError exception.
1292
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001293- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1294 820195.
1295
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001296- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1297 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1298 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1299
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001300- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001301 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1302 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001303
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001304- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1305 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1306 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1307
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001308- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1309 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001310 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001311
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001312- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001313 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1314 the first call.
1315
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001316
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001317Extension modules
1318-----------------
1319
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001320- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1321 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1322
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001323- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1324 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1325 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1326 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1327 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1328 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1329 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001330
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001331- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1332
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001333- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1334
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001335- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1336 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1337
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001338- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1339 fewer false positives.
1340
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001341- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1342 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1343
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001344- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001345 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1346
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001347- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001348 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001349 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001350 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1351 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001352
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001353- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1354 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1355 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1356 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1357
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001358- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1359 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1360 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1361 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1362 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1363 #897625.
1364
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001365- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1366 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1367
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001368- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1369 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1370 and pops on either side of the deque.
1371
1372- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1373 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1374
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001375- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1376 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1377 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1378 other functions that expect a function argument.
1379
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001380- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1381
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001382- os.getsid was added.
1383
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001384- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1385 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1386 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1387
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001388- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1389
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001390- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1391
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001392- readline.clear_history was added.
1393
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001394- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1395
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001396- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1397
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001398- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1399
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001400- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1401
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001402- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1403
1404- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1405
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001406- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1407
1408- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1409
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001410- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1411 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1412 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1413
1414- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1415 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1416 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1417 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1418 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1419 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1420 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1421
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001422- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1423 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1424 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1425 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001426
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001427- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001428 iterators from a single iterable.
1429
1430- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1431 of raising a TypeError exception.
1432
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001433- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1434 as parameter.
1435
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001436Library
1437-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001438
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001439- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1440 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1441 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001442
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001443- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1444 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1445 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001446
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001447- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001448
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001449- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1450 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001451
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001452- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1453 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1454
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001455- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1456
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001457- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001458 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001459
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001460- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001461 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001462
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001463- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1464
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001465- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1466 on cygwin and mingw32.
1467
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001468- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1469
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001470- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1471 module.
1472
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001473- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1474 installation scheme for all platforms.
1475
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001476- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001477 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001478
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001479- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1480 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1481 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1482
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001483- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1484 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1485 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1486
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001487- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1488
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001489- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1490
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001491- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1492 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1493
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001494- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1495 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1496 type pattern with the same value exists.
1497
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001498- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1499 when run from the command prompt).
1500
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001501- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1502 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1503
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001504- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1505 default sort).
1506
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001507- Added global runctx function to profile module
1508
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001509- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1510
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001511- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1512
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001513- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1514
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001515- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001516 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1517 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1518 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1519 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1520 accordingly.
1521
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001522- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1523 decoding standards.
1524
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001525- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1526 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1527 called for all requests.
1528
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001529- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1530 they are passed to the compiler.
1531
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001532- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1533 indent, width and depth.
1534
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001535- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1536 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1537
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001538- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1539 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1540
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001541- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1542
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001543- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1544
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001545- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1546
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001547- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1548 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1549
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001550- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001551 for better performance.
1552
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001553- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001554
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001555- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1556 a string).
1557
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001558- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1559
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001560- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1561
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001562- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1563
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001564- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1565
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001566- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1567 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1568 list of fieldnames.
1569
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001570- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1571 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1572
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001573- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1574
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001575- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1576 empty lists.
1577
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001578- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1579 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1580 and shelves.
1581
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001582- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1583 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1584
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001585- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001586 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1587 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001588
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001589- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1590 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001591 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001592
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001593- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001594 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1595 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1596
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001597- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1598 and removed in Py2.4.
1599
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001600- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1601
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001602- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1603
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001604Tools/Demos
1605-----------
1606
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001607- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1608 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1609
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001610- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1611
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001612- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1613 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1614 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1615 destination in situations where both files are given.
1616
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001617- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1618 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1619 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1620 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1621
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001622- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1623
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001624- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1625 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1626 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1627 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1628 now.
1629
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001630- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1631 in effect
1632
1633- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1634 C-c C-h
1635
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001636- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1637 -d option was given.
1638
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001639Build
1640-----
1641
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001642- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1643 build under OS X.
1644
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001645- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1646 --enable-profiling.
1647
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001648- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1649 is configured --with-tsc.
1650
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001651- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1652 on AMD64.
1653
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001654- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1655 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1656
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001657- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1658 removed.
1659
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001660- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1661 supported (see PEP 11).
1662
1663- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1664
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001665- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1666
1667- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1668 (see PEP 11).
1669
1670- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1671 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1672
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001673C API
1674-----
1675
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001676- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1677 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1678 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1679
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001680- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1681 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1682 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1683 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1684
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001685- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1686 generator objects.
1687
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001688- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1689 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001690 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1691 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001692
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001693- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1694 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1695
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001696- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1697 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1698 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1699 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1700 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1701
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001702- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1703 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1704 about 10% faster.
1705
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001706- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1707 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1708
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001709- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1710 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1711 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1712 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1713
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001714Windows
1715-------
1716
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001717- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1718 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1719 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1720 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1721
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001722- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1723 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1724 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1725
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001726
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001727What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1728===============================
1729
1730*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1731
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001732IDLE
1733----
1734
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001735- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1736 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1737 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1738 context-menu actions.
1739
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001740- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1741 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1742 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1743 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1744 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1745 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1746 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1747 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1748 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1749
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001750
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001751What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1752=============================================
1753
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001754*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001755
1756Core and builtins
1757-----------------
1758
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001759- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001760 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001761 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1762
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001763Extension modules
1764-----------------
1765
1766- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1767 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1768 than once. This has been fixed.
1769
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001770- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1771 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1772 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1773 call.
1774
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001775- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1776
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001777Library
1778-------
1779
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001780- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1781 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1782
1783- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1784 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1785 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1786 restored.
1787
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001788IDLE
1789----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001790
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001791- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001792
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001793Build
1794-----
1795
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001796- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1797 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1798
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001799C API
1800-----
1801
1802Windows
1803-------
1804
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001805- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1806 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1807
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001808- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1809
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001810Mac
1811---
1812
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001813- Various fixes to pimp.
1814
1815- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1816
1817- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1818 more problems than it solves.
1819
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001820
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001821What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1822=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001823
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001824*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1825
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001826Core and builtins
1827-----------------
1828
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001829- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1830 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1831
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001832- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1833 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001834 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001835
1836- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1837 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1838 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001839 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001840
1841- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1842 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001843
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001844- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1845 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1846 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1847
1848- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001849 770247.
1850
1851- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001852
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001853Extension modules
1854-----------------
1855
1856- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1857 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1858
1859- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1860
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001861- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1862
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001863- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1864 contained within the _strptime module.
1865
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001866- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1867 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1868
1869- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001870 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1871
1872- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1873 the find_class attribute, if present.
1874
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001875- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001876
1877 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1878 (SF bug 763298).
1879
1880 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001881 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1882 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1883 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001884
1885 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1886
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001887Library
1888-------
1889
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001890- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1891
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001892- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1893 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1894 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1895 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1896 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1897 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1898 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1899 or Tester().
1900
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001901- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1902 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1903 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1904 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1905 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1906 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1907 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1908 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1909 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001910
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001911 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001912
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001913- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1914 weren't before was an oversight.
1915
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001916- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1917 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1918
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001919- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1920 when there are no lines.
1921
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001922- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1923 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1924
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001925- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1926 to child processes.
1927
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001928- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1929
1930- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1931
1932- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1933 xmlrpclib.
1934
1935- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1936 responses.
1937
1938- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1939 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1940
1941- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1942 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1943 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1944
1945- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1946 used as patterns.
1947
1948- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1949 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1950 than Tk 8.3.
1951
1952- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1953
1954- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001955
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001956Tools/Demos
1957-----------
1958
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001959- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1960
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001961- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1962
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001963- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001964
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001965Build
1966-----
1967
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001968- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1969
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001970- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1971
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001972- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1973 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001974
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001975- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1976 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1977 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001978
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001979C API
1980-----
1981
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001982- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1983 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1984
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001985Windows
1986-------
1987
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001988- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1989 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1990 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1991 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1992 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1993 Python exception ::
1994
1995 thread.error: can't start new thread
1996
1997 is raised now.
1998
1999- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2000 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2001 instead of from DLL teardown.
2002
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002003Mac
2004---
2005
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002006- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002007 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002008 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2009 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2010 the executable in the bundle.
2011
2012- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002013
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002014- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2015
2016- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2017 on Panther.
2018
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002019What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2020================================
2021
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002022*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002023
2024Core and builtins
2025-----------------
2026
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002027- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2028 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2029 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2030 with the -i option.
2031
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002032- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2033 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2034
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002035- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2036 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2037
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002038- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2039 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2040 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2041 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2042 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2043 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2044 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2045 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2046 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2047 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2048 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2049 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2050 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002051
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002052- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2053 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2054 embedded in a lambda expression.
2055
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002056- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2057 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2058 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2059 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2060 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2061
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002062- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2063 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2064 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2065
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002066- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2067 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2068
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002069- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2070 It's writable again.
2071
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002072- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2073 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2074 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002075 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002076
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002077- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2078 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2079 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2080
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002081Extension modules
2082-----------------
2083
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002084- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2085 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2086
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002087- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2088 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2089 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2090 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2091
2092- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2093 collection.
2094
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002095- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2096 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2097 unique within a single program run.
2098
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002099- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2100 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2101
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002102- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2103 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2104
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002105- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2106 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002107
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002108- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2109
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002110- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2111 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2112
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002113- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2114 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2115 for many BSD-derived systems.
2116
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002117
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002118Library
2119-------
2120
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002121- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2122 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2123 primary ones:
2124
2125 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2126 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2127 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2128
2129 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2130 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2131 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2132 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2133 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2134 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2135
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002136- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2137 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2138 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2139 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2140 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2141 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2142 argument.
2143
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002144- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2145 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2146 in the archive.
2147
2148- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2149 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2150
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002151- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2152 569574).
2153
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002154- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2155 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2156 no more.
2157
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002158- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2159 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2160 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2161 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2162 code coverage.
2163
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002164- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2165 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2166 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002167 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2168 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002169
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002170- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2171 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2172 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002173 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002174
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002175- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2176
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002177- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2178 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2179 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2180 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2181
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002182- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2183 handling.
2184
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002185- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2186 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2187
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002188- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2189 in socket.py.
2190
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002191- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2192
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002193- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2194 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2195 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2196 opener with proxy support.
2197
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002198- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2199
2200- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2201
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002202Tools/Demos
2203-----------
2204
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002205- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2206
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002207- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2208
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002209- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2210 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002211
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002212- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2213 files.
2214
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002215Build
2216-----
2217
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002218- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002219 different root directory.
2220
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002221C API
2222-----
2223
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002224- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2225 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2226 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2227 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2228 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2229 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2230 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2231 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2232 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2233 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2234
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002235- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2236 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2237 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2238 from Python.
2239
2240
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002241New platforms
2242-------------
2243
2244None this time.
2245
2246Tests
2247-----
2248
2249- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2250 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2251
2252Windows
2253-------
2254
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002255- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2256
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002257- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2258 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2259 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2260 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2261 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2262 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2263 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2264 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2265 that's what it's for.
2266
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002267Mac
2268---
2269
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002270- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2271 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2272 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2273 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002274- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2275 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2276- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002277
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002278SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2279------------------------------------
2280
2281430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2282598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2283622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2284661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2285683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2286697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2287713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2288724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2289727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2290729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2291730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2292731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2293732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2294733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2295735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2296740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2297744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2298745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2299747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2300749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2301751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2302753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2303755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2304757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2305760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2306
2307
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002308What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2309================================
2310
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002311*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002312
2313Core and builtins
2314-----------------
2315
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002316- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2317 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2318
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002319- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2320 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2321 and cannot be strings).
2322
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002323- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2324 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2325 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2326 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2327
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002328- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2329 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2330 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2331 Python itself.
2332
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002333- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2334 the referenced object, if it has one.
2335
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002336- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2337 the thread started at
2338 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2339
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002340- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2341 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2342 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2343 placed on a list index.
2344
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002345- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2346 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2347 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2348 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2349
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002350- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2351 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2352 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2353 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2354 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2355 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2356 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2357
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002358- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2359 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2360 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2361 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2362 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2363
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002364- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2365 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002366
2367- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2368 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2369 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2370 #693195.)
2371
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002372- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2373 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002374
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002375- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002376 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002377 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2378 interpreter executions, would fail.
2379
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002380- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002381 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002382 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002383
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002384Extension modules
2385-----------------
2386
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002387- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2388 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2389 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2390 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2391
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002392- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2393 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2394
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002395- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2396 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2397 and Greg Chapman.)
2398
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002399- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2400 recursively.
2401
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002402- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002403 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2404 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2405 leaks.
2406
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002407- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2408
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002409- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2410 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2411 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2412 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2413 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2414 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2415 #705836.
2416
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002417- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002418 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2419
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002420- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2421 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2422 See SF bug #692416.
2423
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002424- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2425 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2426
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002427- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2428 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2429 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002430
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002431- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002432 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2433 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2434
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002435- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2436 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2437 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2438 timeouts to work properly.
2439
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002440Library
2441-------
2442
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002443- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2444 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2445 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2446 future release.
2447
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002448- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2449 for querying platform dependent features.
2450
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002451- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002452
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002453- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2454 pickle protocol versions.
2455
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002456- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2457 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2458 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2459
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002460- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2461
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002462- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2463 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2464 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2465 modules.
2466
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002467- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2468 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2469 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2470
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002471- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2472 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2473
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002474- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2475 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2476 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2477
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002478- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002479 MS Office extensions.
2480
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002481- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2482 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2483
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002484- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2485 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2486
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002487- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2488 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2489 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2490 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2491 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2492 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2493
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002494- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2495 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2496 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002497
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002498- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2499 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2500 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2501
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002502- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2503
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002504- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2505 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2506 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2507
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002508Tools/Demos
2509-----------
2510
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002511- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2512 See the module docstring for details.
2513
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002514Build
2515-----
2516
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002517- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2518 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002519
2520C API
2521-----
2522
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002523- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2524
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002525- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2526 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2527 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2528
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002529- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2530 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002531
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002532 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2533 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2534 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002535
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002536- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002537 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2538
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002539- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2540 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2541 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002542
2543New platforms
2544-------------
2545
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002546None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002547
2548Tests
2549-----
2550
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002551- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2552 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002553
2554Windows
2555-------
2556
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002557- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2558 function.
2559
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002560- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2561 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002562
2563Mac
2564---
2565
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002566- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2567 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002568
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002569- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2570 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002571
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002572- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2573 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2574 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002575
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002576- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002577 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2578 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002579
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002580- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2581 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002582
2583
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002584What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2585=================================
2586
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002587*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002588
2589Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002590-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002591
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002592- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2593 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2594 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2595
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002596- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2597 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2598 (SF patch #664376.)
2599
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002600- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2601 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2602 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2603 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2604 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2605 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002606 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002607
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002608- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2609 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2610 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2611 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002612 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002613
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002614- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2615 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2616 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2617 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2618 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2619 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2620 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2621 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2622 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2623 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2624 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2625
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002626- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2627 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2628 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2629 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2630 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2631 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2632
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002633- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2634 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2635
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002636- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2637 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2638 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2639 case.)
2640
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002641- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2642 passed as unicode strings.
2643
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002644- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2645 See SF bug #683467.
2646
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002647- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2648 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2649
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002650- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2651
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002652- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2653
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002654- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2655 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2656 arguments.
2657
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002658- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2659 See SF bug #667147.
2660
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002661- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002662 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002663 See SF bug #676155.
2664
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002665- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002666 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002667 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2668 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2669 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2670 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2671 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2672 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002673
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002674Extension modules
2675-----------------
2676
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002677- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2678 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2679 tp_as_number pointer.
2680
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002681- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2682 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2683 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2684 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2685 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2686
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002687- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2688
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002689- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2690
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002691- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002692 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002693 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2694 patch #678531.)
2695
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002696- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2697 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2698
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002699- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2700 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2701
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002702- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2703
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002704- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2705 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2706 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2707
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002708- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2709
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002710- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2711 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2712
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002713- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002714
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002715- datetime changes:
2716
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002717 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2718
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002719 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2720 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2721 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2722 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2723 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2724 now.
2725
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002726 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002727 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2728 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002729
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002730 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002731 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002732 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2733 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2734 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2735 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002736
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002737 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2738 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2739 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002740 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2741
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002742 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2743 by a later example coded by Guido.
2744
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002745 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002746 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2747 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2748 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002749 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2750 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2751
2752 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2753 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2754 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2755 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2756 tzinfo subclass instance.
2757
2758 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2759 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2760 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2761 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2762 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2763 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2764 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2765 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002766
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002767 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2768 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2769 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2770 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2771 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002772 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2773
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002774 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002775
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002776 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2777 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2778 as a naive datetime object.
2779
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002780 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2781 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2782 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2783
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002784 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2785 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2786 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2787 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2788 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2789 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2790 comparison.
2791
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002792 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2793 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2794 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2795 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002796 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002797
2798 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002799
2800 and ::
2801
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002802 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2803
2804 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2805 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2806 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2807 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2808
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002809 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2810 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2811 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2812 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2813 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2814
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002815 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2816 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002817 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2818 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002819
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002820Library
2821-------
2822
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002823- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2824 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2825
2826- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2827 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2828 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2829 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2830 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2831 See PEP 307 for details.
2832
2833- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2834 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2835
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002836- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2837 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002838 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002839 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2840 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002841 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002842
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002843- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2844 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2845
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002846- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2847 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2848 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2849
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002850- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2851
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002852- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2853 exception.
2854
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002855- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2856 class.
2857
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002858- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2859 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2860 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2861
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002862- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2863 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2864
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002865- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002866 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2867 See SF bug #659228.
2868
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002869- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2870 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2871 See SF patch #651082.
2872
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002873- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002874
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002875- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2876 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2877
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002878- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002879 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002880
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002881- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2882 DOS paths from other platforms.
2883
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002884Tools/Demos
2885-----------
2886
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002887- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2888 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2889 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2890 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2891 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2892 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2893 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2894 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2895 example:
2896
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002897 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2898 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002899
2900 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2901
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002902
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002903Build
2904-----
2905
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002906- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2907 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2908 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002909 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2910
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002911 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2912
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002913- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2914 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2915 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2916 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2917 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2918 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2919 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2920 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2921 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2922
2923- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2924 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2925 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2926 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2927
2928- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2929 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2930
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002931C API
2932-----
2933
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002934- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2935 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002936
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002937- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2938 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2939 tp_as_number pointer.
2940
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002941- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2942 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2943 (SF #681367)
2944
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002945- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2946 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2947 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2948 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002949
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002950Tests
2951-----
2952
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002953- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002954 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2955 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2956 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2957 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2958 pydoc.)
2959
2960- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2961
2962- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002963
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002964Windows
2965-------
2966
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002967- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2968 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2969 time).
2970
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002971- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2972 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2973
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002974- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2975 release without strong cryptography.
2976
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002977- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002978 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002979
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002980- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2981 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2982
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002983Mac
2984---
2985
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002986- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2987 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002988
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002989- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2990 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2991 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002992
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002993- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2994 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002995
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002996- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2997 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2998 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2999 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003000
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003001- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003002 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3003 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3004 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003005
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003006
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003007What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003008=================================
3009
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003010*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003011
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003012Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003013--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003014
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003015- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3016
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003017- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3018 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003019 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003020 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003021 a different meaning than before.
3022
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003023- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003024 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003025 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003026
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003027- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003028 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003029 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003030
3031- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3032 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3033 and deallocation.
3034
3035- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3036 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3037
3038- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3039 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3040 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3041 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3042 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3043
3044- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3045 now detected by the garbage collector.
3046
3047- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3048 [SF bug 519621]
3049
3050- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3051 identifier.
3052
3053- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3054 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3055 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3056 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3057 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3058 [SF bug 563060]
3059
3060- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3061 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3062 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3063 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3064 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3065
3066- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3067 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3068 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3069
3070- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3071
3072- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3073 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3074 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3075 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3076 state of the slots would be lost.)
3077
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003078Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003079-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003080
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003081- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003082 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3083 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3084 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3085 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003086 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3087 Jython 2.1.
3088
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003089- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003090 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003091 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3092 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3093 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3094 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3095 these, see PEP 302.
3096
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003097- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3098 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3099 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3100
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003101- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3102 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3103 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3104
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003105- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3106 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3107 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3108
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003109- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3110 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3111 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3112 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3113 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3114 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3115 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3116 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3117 releases or implementations.
3118
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003119- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003120 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3121 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003122
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003123- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3124 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3125
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003126- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3127 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3128 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3129
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003130- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3131 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3132
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003133- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3134 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003135 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3136 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003137
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003138- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3139 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3140 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3141 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3142 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3143
3144 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3145 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3146 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3147 pattern.
3148
3149 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3150 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3151 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3152 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3153
3154 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3155 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3156 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3157 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3158 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3159 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3160
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003161- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3162 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3163 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3164 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3165 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3166 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3167 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3168 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003169
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003170- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3171 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3172 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3173 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3174 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003175 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3176 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3177 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3178 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3179 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3180 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3181 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003182
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003183- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3184 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3185
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003186- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3187 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3188 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3189 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3190 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3191 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3192 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3193 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3194 to Zack Weinberg!
3195
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003196- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3197 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3198 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3199 type. This has been fixed now.
3200
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003201- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3202 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3203 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3204
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003205- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3206 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3207 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3208 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3209 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3210 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3211 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3212 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003213 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003214
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003215- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3216 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3217 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003218
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003219- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3220 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3221 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3222 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3223 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3224 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3225 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3226 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003227 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003228 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3229 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3230
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003231- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3232 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3233 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3234 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3235 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3236 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3237 this.)
3238
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003239- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3240 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003241 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003242 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003243 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3244 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003245 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3246 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003247
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003248- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3249 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3250 currently running.
3251
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003252- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3253 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3254 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3255 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3256
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003257- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3258 as directory names.
3259
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003260- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3261 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3262
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003263- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3264 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3265
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003266- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003267 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3268 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003269
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003270- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3271 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3272 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3273 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3274 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3275
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003276- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3277 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3278 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3279 removed.
3280
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003281- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3282 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3283 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3284
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003285- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3286 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3287 to __debug__.
3288
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003289- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3290 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3291 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3292
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003293- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3294 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3295 deprecated now.
3296
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003297- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3298 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3299 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003300
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003301- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3302 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3303 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3304 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3305 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003306
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003307- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3308 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3309
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003310- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3311 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3312 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003313 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003314 is backward compatible.
3315
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003316- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3317 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3318 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3319 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3320 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3321
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003322- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3323 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3324 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3325 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3326 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3327 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003328
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003329- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3330 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3331
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003332- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3333 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3334
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003335- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3336 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3337 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3338 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3339 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3340
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003341- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3342 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3343 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3344
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003345- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003346 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3347
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003348- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3349 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3350 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003351
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003352- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3353 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3354
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003355- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3356 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3357 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3358
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003359- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3360
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003361Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003362-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003363
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003364- Added three operators to the operator module:
3365 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3366 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3367 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3368
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003369- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3370
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003371- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3372 archives.
3373
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003374- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3375 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3376 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3377
3378 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3379
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003380- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3381 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3382 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003383 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003384
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003385- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3386 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3387 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3388 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003389 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3390 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3391 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3392 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003393
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003394- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3395 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003396
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003397- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3398
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003399- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3400 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3401
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003402- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3403 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3404 supported.
3405
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003406- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3407
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003408- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3409 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003410
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003411- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3412 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3413
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003414- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3415
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003416- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3417 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3418
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003419- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3420 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3421 functions but callable type objects.
3422
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003423- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003424 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003425 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003426
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003427- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3428 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003429
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003430- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3431 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003432
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003433- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3434 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3435 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3436 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3437
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003438- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3439 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003440
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003441- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3442 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3443 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3444 and __imul__.
3445
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003446- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003447 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3448 is called.
3449
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003450- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3451 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3452 interpreter was compiled.
3453
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003454- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3455 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3456 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003457 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003458 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3459 1, not 2.
3460
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003461- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3462 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3463 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3464 limit.
3465
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003466- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3467 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3468 bug #623464.
3469
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003470- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3471 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3472 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3473 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3474
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003475Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003476-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003477
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003478- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3479
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003480- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3481 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3482 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3483 with Python 2.3a2.
3484
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003485- os.path exposes getctime.
3486
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003487- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003488 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003489 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003490 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003491 unit tests of floating point results.
3492
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003493- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3494 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3495 has been increased.
3496
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003497- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3498 executed.
3499
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003500- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3501 postinstallation script.
3502
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003503- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3504 test the current module.
3505
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003506- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003507 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3508 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3509 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3510 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3511
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003512- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003513 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003514 Ward's Optik package.
3515
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003516- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3517 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3518 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3519 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3520
3521- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3522 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003523 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003524
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003525- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3526 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3527 shelf are binary pickles.
3528
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003529- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3530 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3531
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003532- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3533 modules are iterators now.
3534
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003535- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3536 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3537 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3538 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3539 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3540 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003541
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003542- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3543 with their entity value.
3544
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003545- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3546
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003547- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3548 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003549
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003550- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3551 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003552 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003553
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003554- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3555 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3556 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3557 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3558 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3559 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3560 main():
3561
3562 import locale
3563 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3564
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003565- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3566 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3567
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003568- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3569 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3570 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3571 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3572 to the new standard.
3573
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003574- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3575 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3576 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3577 an extension to the database.
3578
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003579- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3580 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3581 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3582 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003583 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003584
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003585- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003586 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003587
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003588- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3589 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3590 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3591 bounded integers.
3592
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003593- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3594 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3595 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3596 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3597 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3598 in existence.
3599
3600 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3601 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3602 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3603 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3604 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3605 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3606
3607 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3608 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3609 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3610 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3611
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003612- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3613 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3614 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3615
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003616- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3617
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003618- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3619 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3620 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3621 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3622
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003623- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3624 argument.
3625
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003626- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3627 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3628 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3629 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3630 [SF patch 560794].
3631
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003632- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3633 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3634 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003635 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3636 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3637 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003638
3639- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3640 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003641
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003642- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3643 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3644 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3645 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003646
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003647- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3648 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3649 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3650 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3651 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3652
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003653- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003654
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003655- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3656
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003657- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3658 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3659 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3660 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3661 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3662 identical to None.
3663
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003664- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3665 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3666 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3667 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3668 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3669 results now.
3670
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003671- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3672 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3673
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003674- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3675 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3676 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3677 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3678 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3679 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3680 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3681 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3682
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003683- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3684
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003685- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3686 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3687
3688- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3689 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3690 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3691 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3692 and other systems.
3693
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003694- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3695 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3696 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3697 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 +00003698 work well with these.
3699
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003700- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3701
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003702- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003703 connections.
3704
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003705- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3706 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3707 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3708
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003709- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3710 sets
3711
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003712- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3713 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3714 name.
3715
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003716- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3717 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3718 passed in.
3719
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003720- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003721 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003722 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3723 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003724
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003725- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3726
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003727- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3728
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003729- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3730 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3731 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3732
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003733- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3734 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3735 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3736 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003737 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003738
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003739- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003740 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003741 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003742
3743- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3744 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3745 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3746
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003747- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003748 the value of its expression argument.
3749
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003750- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3751 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3752 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3753
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003754- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3755 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3756 skipstone browser was included.
3757
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003758- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3759 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3760
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003761Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003762-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003763
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003764- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3765 names in addition to accepting file names.
3766
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003767- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3768 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3769 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3770 still used and useful.)
3771
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003772- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3773 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3774 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3775 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003776
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003777- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3778 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3779 the generated binary.
3780
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003781Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003782-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003783
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003784- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3785
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003786- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3787 except in the hands of experts.
3788
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003789- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003790 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3791 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3792 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003793
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003794- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3795 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3796 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3797 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3798 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3799 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3800 builds.
3801
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003802- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3803 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3804 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3805 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3806 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3807 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3808 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3809 new type.
3810
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003811- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003812
3813 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3814 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3815 positive infinities.
3816
3817 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3818 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3819 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3820 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3821 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3822 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3823 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3824
3825 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3826
3827 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3828
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003829- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3830 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3831 size of the executable.
3832
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003833- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3834 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3835 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3836 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003837
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003838- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3839
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003840- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3841 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3842 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003843
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003844- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3845 well as Unix.
3846
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003847- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3848 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3849 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3850 modules in the README file for details.
3851
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003852C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003853-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003854
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003855- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3856 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003857 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003858 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003859 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003860
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003861- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3862 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3863 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3864 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3865 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3866 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003867 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003868 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3869 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3870 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3871 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3872 aligned.)
3873
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003874- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3875 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3876 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3877
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003878- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3879 level.
3880
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003881- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3882 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3883 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3884 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3885 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3886
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003887- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3888 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3889 code.
3890
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003891- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3892 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3893 adjusting for negative indices.
3894
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003895- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3896 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3897 object.
3898
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003899- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3900 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3901 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3902
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003903- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3904 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003905
3906- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3907
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003908- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3909 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3910 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3911 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3912
3913- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3914
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003915- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003916
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003917- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003918 without going through the buffer API.
3919
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003920- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003921
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003922- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3923 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3924 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3925 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3926
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003927- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3928 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3929
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003930- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003931 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3932
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003933New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003934-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003935
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003936- OpenVMS is now supported.
3937
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003938- AtheOS is now supported.
3939
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003940- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3941
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003942- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3943
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003944Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003945-----
3946
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003947- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3948 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3949 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003950
3951Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003952-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003953
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003954- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3955 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3956 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3957 bugs.
3958 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003959 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003960 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3961 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003962 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003963
3964- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003965 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003966
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003967- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3968 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3969
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003970- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3971 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003972 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003973 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3974
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003975- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3976 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3977 use files" uninstall option).
3978
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003979- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3980
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003981- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3982 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3983
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003984- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3985 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3986 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3987
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003988- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3989 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3990 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3991 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3992 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003993 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3994 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3995 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003996
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003997- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003998 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003999 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4000 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4001 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4002 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4003 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4004 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4005 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4006 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4007 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4008 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4009 work around.
4010
4011- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4012 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4013 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4014 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4015 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4016 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4017 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4018 specified with O_CREAT too).
4019
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004020Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004021----
4022
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004023- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004024
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004025- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4026 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4027 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4028
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004029- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4030 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4031 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4032
4033- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4034 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4035 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4036 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4037 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4038 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4039 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4040 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004041
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004042- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4043 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4044 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004045
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004046- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4047 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4048 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4049 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4050 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004051
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004052- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4053 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4054 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004055
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004056- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4057 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004058
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004059- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4060 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4061 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4062 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4063 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004064
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004065- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4066 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4067 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4068
4069- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4070 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4071 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004072
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004073- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4074 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4075 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4076 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004077 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004078
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004079- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4080 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004081
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004082- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4083 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004084
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004085- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004086 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004087 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4088 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004089
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004090
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004091What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004092===============================
4093
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004094*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4095
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004096Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004097--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004098
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004099- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4100 with a custom metaclass.
4101
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004102Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004103-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004104
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004105- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4106 are proxies.
4107
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004108Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004109-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004110
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004111- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4112 very short strings.
4113
4114- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4115 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4116 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4117 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4118 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4119
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004120Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004121-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004122
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004123- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4124 close or delete time).
4125
4126- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4127 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4128
4129- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4130
4131- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004132 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004133
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004134Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004135-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004136
4137Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004138-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004139
4140C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004141-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004142
4143New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004144-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004145
4146Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004147-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004148
4149Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004150-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004151
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004152- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4153
4154- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4155 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4156
4157- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4158 deleted at process exit time.
4159
4160- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4161 in backslash.
4162
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004163Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004164----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004165
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004166- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4167 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4168 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4169
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004170
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004171What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004172===========================
4173
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004174*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4175
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004176Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004177--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004178
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004179- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4180 been extensively updated. See
4181
4182 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4183
4184 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4185
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004186- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4187 deleted!
4188
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004189- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4190 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4191 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4192 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4193 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4194
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004195- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4196
4197 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4198 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4199
4200 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4201 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4202 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4203 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4204 supported anyway.
4205
4206 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4207 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4208
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004209- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4210 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4211 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4212 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4213 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004214
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004215- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4216 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4217 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4218
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004219Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004220-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004221
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004222- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4223 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4224 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4225 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4226 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4227 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004228 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4229 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4230 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4231 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004232
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004233- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4234 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4235 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4236
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004237Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004238-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004239
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004240- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4241
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004242Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004243-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004244
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004245- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4246 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4247 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4248 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4249 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4250 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4251
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004252- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4253
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004254- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4255
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004256- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4257
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004258- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4259 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4260 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4261
4262- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4263
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004264Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004265-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004266
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004267- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4268 off a search on Google.
4269
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004270Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004271-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004272
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004273- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4274 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4275 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4276 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4277 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4278 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4279 other platforms should do likewise.
4280
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004281- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4282 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4283 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4284
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004285C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004286-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004287
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004288- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4289 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4290 producing key-value pairs.
4291
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004292- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004293 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004294 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4295 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4296 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4297 previously went unchallenged.
4298
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004299New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004300-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004301
4302Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004303-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004304
4305Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004306-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004307
4308Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004309----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004310
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004311- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4312 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004313
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004314- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4315 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4316 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4317 home.
4318
4319
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004320What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004321===========================
4322
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004323*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4324
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004325Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004326--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004327
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004328- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4329 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004330
4331 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004332 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004333
4334 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4335 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004336 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004337 This needs to be documented.
4338
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004339- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4340 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4341
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004342- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4343 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4344 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4345
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004346- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4347 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4348
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004349- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4350 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4351 class forbids it).
4352
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004353- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4354 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4355 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4356
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004357- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4358
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004359Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004360-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004361
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004362- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4363 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004364 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004365
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004366- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4367 (like 1 + '').
4368
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004369Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004370-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004371
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004372- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4373 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4374 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4375 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004376 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004377 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4378
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004379- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4380 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4381 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4382 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4383
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004384- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4385 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004386 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4387 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4388 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004389
4390- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4391 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004392
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004393- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4394 bytes on its input.
4395
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004396Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004397-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004398
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004399- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004400 convenience function.
4401
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004402- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4403 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4404 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004405 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4406 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4407 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4408 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4409 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4410 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004411
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004412- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4413 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4414 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4415 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4416
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004417- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4418 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4419 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4420
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004421- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4422 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4423 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4424 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4425
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004426- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4427 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004428 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004429 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4430 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4431 new -l and -e options.
4432
4433- statcache is now deprecated.
4434
4435- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4436 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004437 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004438 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4439 time properly taken into account.
4440
4441- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4442 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4443 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4444 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4445
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004446Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004447-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004448
4449Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004450-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004451
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004452- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4453 is built with libdb3 if available.
4454
4455- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4456
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004457C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004458-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004459
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004460- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4461 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4462 PySequence_Size().
4463
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004464- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4465
4466- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4467 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4468 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4469
4470- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4471 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4472
4473- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4474 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4475
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004476New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004477-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004478
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004479- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4480 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4481
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004482- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4483 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4484
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004485- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4486
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004487Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004488-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004489
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004490- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4491 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4492
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004493Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004494-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004495
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004496Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004497----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004498
4499- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4500 removed completely in the next release.
4501
4502- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4503 OSX.
4504
4505- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4506 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4507
4508- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4509
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004510
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004511What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004512===========================
4513
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004514*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4515
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004516Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004517--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004518
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004519- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004520 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004521 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004522 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4523 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004524 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4525 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004526 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4527 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004528
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004529- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4530 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4531
4532- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4533 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4534
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004535Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004536-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004537
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004538- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4539 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4540 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4541 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4542 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4543 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4544 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4545 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4546
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004547- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4548 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4549 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4550 example).
4551
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004552- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004553 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004554 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004555 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004556
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004557- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4558 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4559 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004560 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004561
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004562- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4563 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4564 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4565 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4566 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4567 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4568
4569 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4570
4571 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4572
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004573Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004574-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004575
4576- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4577
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004578- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4579
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004580- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4581 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004582
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004583- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4584 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4585 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4586 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4587 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4588 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004589 attributes.
4590
4591- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4592 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4593 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004594
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004595- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4596 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4597 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004598
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004599- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4600 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4601 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004602 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4603 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4604
4605- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4606 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004607
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004608Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004609-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004610
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004611- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4612 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4613
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004614- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4615 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4616 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4617 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4618
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004619- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4620 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4621 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4622 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4623
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004624 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4625 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4626 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4627 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4628 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4629 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4630 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4631 without losing information).
4632
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004633- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004634 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4635 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4636 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4637 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4638 module).
4639
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004640 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004641 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4642 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4643 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4644 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004645
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004646- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004647 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4648 encoding.
4649
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004650- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4651 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4652
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004653- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004654 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4655
4656- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4657 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4658 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4659 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4660
4661- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4662
4663- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4664 ON, and OFF.
4665
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004666- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4667 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4668
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004669Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004670-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004671
4672- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4673 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4674 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004675
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004676- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4677 been added: -X and -E.
4678
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004679Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004680-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004681
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004682- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4683 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4684
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004685C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004686-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004687
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004688- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4689 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4690 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4691 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4692 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4693
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004694- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4695 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4696 as long) arguments.
4697
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004698- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4699 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4700 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4701 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4702 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4703 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4704
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004705- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4706 input.
4707
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004708New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004709-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004710
4711Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004712-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004713
4714Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004715-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004716
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004717- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4718 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4719 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4720
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004721- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4722 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4723 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004724 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004725
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004726 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4727 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4728 import signal
4729 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004730
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004731 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004732 while 1:
4733 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004734 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004735 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4736 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4737 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4738 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004739
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004740
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004741What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4742===========================
4743
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004744*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4745
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004746Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004747--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004748
4749- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4750 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4751 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4752
4753- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4754 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4755 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4756 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4757 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4758 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4759 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004760
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004761- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004762 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004763 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4764 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4765 associate a docstring with a property.
4766
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004767- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4768 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4769 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4770 other built-in object types.
4771
4772- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4773 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4774 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4775 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4776 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4777
4778- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4779 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4780
4781- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4782 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004783 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004784 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4785 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4786 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4787 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4788 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4789
4790- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4791 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4792 class.
4793
4794- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4795 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4796 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4797 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4798
4799- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4800 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4801 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4802 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4803
4804- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4805 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4806
4807- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4808 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4809 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4810 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4811 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004812 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004813 with the same value as s.
4814
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004815- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4816
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004817Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004818----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004819
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004820- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4821
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004822- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4823 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4824 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4825 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4826 objects.
4827
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004828- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4829 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004830 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4831 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4832
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004833- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4834 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4835 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4836
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004837Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004838-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004839
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004840- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4841 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4842 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4843 by the instances.
4844
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004845- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4846 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4847 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4848
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004849- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4850 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4851 before the entire comparison is complete.
4852
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004853- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4854 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4855 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4856
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004857- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4858 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4859 getwriter().
4860
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004861- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4862 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4863
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004864- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004865 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4866 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4867
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004868- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4869 iterable object.
4870
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004871- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4872 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004873
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004874- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4875 authentication.
4876
4877- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4878 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004879
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004880- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004881 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4882 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4883 a sample driver.)
4884
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004885Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004886-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004887
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004888- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4889 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4890 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4891 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4892 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4893 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4894 kernel has large file support.
4895
4896- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4897 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4898 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4899 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4900 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4901
4902- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4903 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4904 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4905
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004906C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004907-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004908
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004909- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4910 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4911
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004912New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004913-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004914
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004915- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4916 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4917
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004918Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004919-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004920
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004921- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4922 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4923 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4924 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4925 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4926
4927- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4928 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4929 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4930 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4931
4932- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4933 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4934
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004935Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004936-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004937
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004938- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004939 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4940 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004941
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004942
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004943What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4944===========================
4945
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004946*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4947
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004948Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004949----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004950
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004951- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4952 big to represent as a C double.
4953
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004954- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4955 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4956 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4957 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4958 restriction).
4959
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004960- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4961 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4962 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4963 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4964 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4965
4966 >>> dir([])
4967 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4968 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4969 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4970 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4971 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4972 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4973 'reverse', 'sort']
4974
4975 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4976
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004977- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004978 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4979 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4980 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4981 OverflowError exception.
4982
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004983- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004984 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004985 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4986 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4987 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4988 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4989 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004990 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004991 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4992 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4993
4994 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4995 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4996 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4997 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004998
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004999- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005000 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5001 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5002 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5003 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5004 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5005 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5006 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5007 once it is created.
5008
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005009- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5010 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5011 (key, value) pairs.
5012
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005013- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005014 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5015 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5016
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005017- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5018 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5019 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5020 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5021 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005022
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005023- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005024 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5025 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5026
5027 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5028
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005029- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005030 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5031
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005032Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005033-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005034
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005035- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005036 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5037 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005038
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005039- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5040 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5041 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5042 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5043 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5044 in this area anymore).
5045
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005046- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5047 threading.Timer.
5048
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005049- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5050 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5051
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005052- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005053 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5054
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005055- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005056 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5057 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5058 converted to Python longs.
5059
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005060- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005061 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5062
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005063- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5064 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5065 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5066
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005067Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005068-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005069
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005070- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5071 division operators as per PEP 238.
5072
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005073Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005074-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005075
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005076- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5077 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5078 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5079 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5080
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005081C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005082-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005083
5084- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005085
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005086- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5087 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005088 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005089
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005090 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5091 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005092 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005093 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005094
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005095- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005096 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5097 module:
5098
5099 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005100
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005101 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5102 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005103
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005104 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5105 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005106
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005107 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5108
5109 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5110
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005111- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005112 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5113 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5114 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005115
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005116New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005117-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005118
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005119- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5120 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5121 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5122 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5123 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005124
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005125Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005126-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005127
5128Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005129-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005130
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005131- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5132 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5133 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5134 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005135 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5136 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5137 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5138 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5139 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005140
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005141- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005142 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5143
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005144
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005145What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5146===========================
5147
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005148*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5149
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005150Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005151-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005152
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005153- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5154 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5155
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005156- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5157 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5158 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005159
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005160- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5161 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5162 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5163 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005164
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005165- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5166
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005167- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005168
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005169Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005170-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005171
5172- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005173 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005174 the module docstring for details.
5175
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005176Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005177-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005178
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005179- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005180 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5181 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5182 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005183
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005184- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5185 Nick Mathewson.
5186
5187Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005188----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005189
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005190- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5191 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5192 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5193 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5194 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5195 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5196 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5197 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5198
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005199- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5200 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5201 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5202 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5203
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005204- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5205 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5206 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5207 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5208 come a long way).
5209
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005210- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5211 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5212 write filters for these warnings).
5213
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005214- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5215 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5216 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5217 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5218 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5219
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005220- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5221 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5222 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5223 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5224 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5225 older distribution.
5226
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005227Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005228-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005229
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005230- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5231 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005232 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005233
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005234- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5235 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5236 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5237
5238- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5239
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005240- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5241
5242- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5243
5244- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5245
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005246- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005247
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005248- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5249
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005250New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005251-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005252
5253C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005254-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005255
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005256- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5257 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5258 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5259 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5260 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5261 against buffer overruns.
5262
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005263- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005264 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5265 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005266 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5267 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5268 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5269
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005270- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5271 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5272 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5273 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5274 deprecated.
5275
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005276Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005277-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005278
5279- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5280 relevant is found.
5281
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005282
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005283What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005284===========================
5285
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005286*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5287
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005288Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005289----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005290
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005291- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5292 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5293 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5294 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5295 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5296 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5297 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5298 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005299 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005300 repaired.
5301
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005302- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005303 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005304 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5305 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5306 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5307 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5308 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5309 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5310 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5311 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5312
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005313- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5314 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5315 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5316 leading BMO character).
5317
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005318- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5319 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5320 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5321
5322 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5323 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5324 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005325
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005326 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5327 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5328 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5329 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5330 for various simple to use conversions.
5331
5332 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5333 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5334
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005335 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5336 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5337 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5338 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5339 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5340 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5341 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5342 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5343 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5344 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5345 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5346 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5347 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5348 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5349 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005350
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005351- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5352 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5353 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005354 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005355 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005356
5357 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005358 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5359 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5360 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5361 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5362 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005363 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5364 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005365
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005366 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5367 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5368 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005369 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005370
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005371- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5372 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5373 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5374 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5375 floating arithmetic,
5376
5377 x = 9007199254740992.0
5378 print long(x)
5379
5380 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5381 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5382 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5383 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5384 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5385 functions are of good quality).
5386
5387 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5388 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5389 algorithms to break.
5390
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005391- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5392 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5393 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5394 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5395 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5396 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5397 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5398 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5399 order.
5400
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005401- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5402 operation along the most common code paths.
5403
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005404- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5405 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5406
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005407- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5408 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5409 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5410 {}.update(UserDict())
5411
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005412- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5413 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5414 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5415 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5416 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5417 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5418 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5419 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5420
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005421- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005422 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005423
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005424 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005425 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5426 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005427 join() method of strings
5428 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005429 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5430 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005431 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005432 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005433
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005434- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5435 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5436
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005437- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5438 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5439
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005440- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5441 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5442 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5443 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5444
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005445- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5446 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005447 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005448 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5449 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005450
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005451- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5452
5453
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005454Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005455-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005456
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005457- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005458 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005459 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5460 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5461
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005462- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5463 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5464
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005465- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5466 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5467 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5468 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5469
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005470- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5471 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5472 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5473
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005474- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5475
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005476- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5477
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005478- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5479 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5480 that are still imported into string.py).
5481
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005482- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5483
5484- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5485 Now it does.
5486
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005487- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5488
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005489- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5490 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5491 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5492 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5493 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005494 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5495 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005496
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005497- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5498 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5499 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5500 'help(object)'.
5501
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005502Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005503-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005504
5505- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005506 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005507 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5508 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5509
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005510- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005511 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5512 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005513
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005514C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005515-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005516
5517- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5518 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005519
5520----
5521
5522**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**