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Guido van Rossumf0b69f01997-08-15 02:50:47 +00001What's new in this release?
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002===========================
3
Guido van Rossumc45cf021998-04-10 20:06:21 +00004Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.4. The
5sections are now in a more useful order: the most recent changes are
6listed first.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00007
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00008A note on attributions: while I have sprinkled some names throughout
Guido van Rossum7ea639b1997-11-26 16:36:28 +00009here, I'm grateful to many more people who remain unnamed. You may
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +000010find your name in the ACKS file. If you believe you deserve more
11credit, let me know and I'll add you to the list!
12
13
Guido van Rossum7ea639b1997-11-26 16:36:28 +000014======================================================================
15
Guido van Rossumc45cf021998-04-10 20:06:21 +000016
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +000017From 1.5.1 to 1.5.2a1
18=====================
19
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +000020General
21-------
22
23- When searching for the library, a landmark that is a compiled module
24(string.pyc or string.pyo) is also accepted.
25
26- When following symbolic links to the python executable, use a loop
27so that a symlink to a symlink can work.
28
29- Added a hack so that when you type 'quit' or 'exit' at the
30interpreter, you get a friendly explanation of how to press Ctrl-D (or
31Ctrl-Z) to exit.
32
33- New and improved Misc/python-mode.el (Python mode for Emacs).
34
35Miscellaneous fixed bugs
36------------------------
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +000037
38- All patches on the patch page have been integrated. (But much more
39has been done!)
40
41- Several memory leaks plugged (e.g. the one for classes with a
42__getattr__ method).
43
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +000044- Removed the only use of calloc(). This triggered an obscure bug on
45multiprocessor Sparc Solaris 2.6.
46
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +000047Documentation
48-------------
49
50- The documentation has been expanded and the formatting improved.
51(Remember that the documentation is now unbundled and has its own
52release cycle though; see http://www.python.org/doc/.)
53
54- Doc strings have been added to many modules: socket, signal, select,
55time, thread, sys, __builtin__. Also to methods of list objects (try
56[].append.__doc__). A doc string on a type will now automatically be
57propagated to an instance if the instance has methods that are
58accessed in the usual way.
59
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +000060- Added Misc/Porting -- a mini-FAQ on porting to a new platform.
61
62Ports and build procedure
63-------------------------
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +000064
65- The BeOS port is now integrated. Courtesy Chris Herborth.
66
67- Symbol files for FreeBSD 2.x and 3.x have been contributed
68(Lib/plat-freebsd[23]/*).
69
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +000070- Support HPUX 10.20 DCE threads.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +000071
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +000072- Finally fixed the configure script so that (on SGI) if -OPT:Olimit=0
73works, it won't also use -Olimit 1500 (which gives a warning for every
74file). Also support the SGI_ABI environment variable better.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +000075
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +000076- Other miscellaneous improvements to the configure script and
77Makefiles.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +000078
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +000079- The makesetup script now understands absolute pathnames ending in .o
80in the module -- it assumes it's a file for which we have no source.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +000081
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +000082- The test suite now uses a different sound sample.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +000083
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +000084Built-in functions and exceptions
85---------------------------------
86
87- Better checks for invalid input to int(), long(), string.atoi(),
88string.atol(). (Formerly, a sign without digits would be accepted as
89a legal ways to spell zero.)
90
91- New standard exceptions EnvironmentError and PosixError;
92EnvironmentError is the base class for IOError and PosixError;
93PosixError is the same as os.error. All this so that either exception
94class can be instantiated with a third argument indicating a filename.
95The built-in function open() and most os/posix functions that take a
96filename argument now use this.
97
98- Changes to map() and filter() to use the length of a sequence only
99as a hint -- if an IndexError happens earlier, take that. (Formerly,
100this was considered an error.)
101
102- Experimental feature in getattr(): a third argument can specify a
103default (instead of raising AttributeError).
104
105- Implement round() slightly different, so that for negative ndigits
106no additional errors happen in the last step.
107
108Built-in types and statements
109-----------------------------
110
111- Changes to comparisons: numbers now compare smaller than any other
112type. This is done to prevent the circularity where [] < 0L < 1 < []
113is true. As a side effect, cmp(None, 0) is now positive instead of
114negative. This *shouldn't* affect any working code, but I've found
115that the change caused several "sleeping" bugs to become active, so
116beware!
117
118- Instance methods may now have other callable objects than just
119Python functions as their im_func. Use new.instancemethod() or write
120your own C code to create them; new.instancemethod() may be called
121with None for the instance to create an unbound method.
122
123- Assignment to __name__, __dict__ or __bases__ of a class object is
124now allowed (with stringent type checks); also allow assignment to
125__getattr__ etc. The cached values for __getattr__ etc. are
126recomputed after such assignments (but not for derived classes :-( ).
127
128- New, better performing sort() method for list objects.
129
130- List objects now have an experimental pop() method; l.pop() returns
131and removes the last item; l.pop(i) returns and removes the item at
132i. Also, the sort() method is faster again. Sorting is now also
133safer: it is impossible for the sorting function to modify the list
134while the sort is going on (this could cause core dumps).
135
136- Fix a bug in the overflow checking when converting a Python long to
137a C long (failed to convert -2147483648L, and other spurious bugs).
138
139- Allow assignment to some attributes of function objects: func_code,
140func_defaults and func_doc / __doc__. (With type checks except for
141__doc__ / func_doc .)
142
143- Fix a peculiar bug that would allow "import sys.time" to succeed
144(believing the built-in time module to be a part of the sys package).
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000145
146Library modules
147---------------
148
149- New tests (in Lib/test): reperf.py (regular expression benchmark),
150sortperf.py (list sorting benchmark), test_MimeWriter.py (test case
151for the MimeWriter module).
152
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000153- New functions in os.py: makedirs(), removedirs(), renames(). New
154variable: linesep (the line separator as found in binary files,
155i.e. '\n' on Unix, '\r\n' on DOS/Windows, '\r' on Mac. Do *not* use
156this with files opened in (default) text mode; the line separator used
157will always be '\n'!
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000158
159- Changes to the 'os.path' submodule of os.py: added getsize(),
160getmtime(), getatime() -- these fetch the most popular items from the
161stat return tuple.
162
163- The smtplib.py module now supports ESMTP and has improved standard
164compliance, for picky servers.
165
166- Some fixes to gzip.py. In particular, the readlines() method now
167returns the lines *with* trailing newline characters, like readlines()
168of regular file objects.
169
170- In whrandom.py, added new method and function randrange(), same as
171choice(range(start, stop, step)) but faster. This addresses the
172problem that randint() was accidentally defined as taking an inclusive
173range. Also, randint(a, b) is now redefined as randrange(a, b+1),
174adding extra range and type checking to its arguments!
175
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000176- Add some semi-thread-safety to random.gauss() (it used to be able to
177crash when invoked from separate threads; now the worst it can do is
178give a duplicate result occasionally).
179
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000180- In getpass.py, don't use raw_input() to ask for the password -- we
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000181don't want it to show up in the readline history! Also don't catch
182interrupts (the try-finally already does all necessary cleanup).
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000183
184- Generalized test/regrtest.py so that it is useful for testing other
185packages.
186
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000187- Changes in urllib.py; sped up unquote() and quote(). Fixed an
188obscure bug in quote_plus(). Added urlencode(dict) -- convenience
189function for sending a POST request with urlopen(). Use the getpass
190module to ask for a password. Rewrote the (test) main program so that
191when used as a script, it can retrieve one or more URLs to stdout.
192Use -t to run the self-test. Made the proxy code work again.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000193
194- In pdb.py, support for setting breaks on files/modules that haven't
195been loaded yet.
196
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000197- In rfc822.py, add a new class AddressList. Also support a new
198overridable method, isheader(). Also add a get() method similar to
199dictionaries (and make getheader() an alias for it). Also, be smarter
200about seekable (test whether fp.tell() works) and test for presence of
201unread() method before trying seeks.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000202
203- Some speedups to re.py, especially the string substitution and split
204functions. Also added new function/method findall(), to find all
205occurrences of a given substring.
206
207- Improvements to rexec.py: package support; support a (minimal)
208sys.exc_info(). Also made the (test) main program a bit fancier (you
209can now use it to run arbitrary Python scripts in restricted mode).
210
211- In sgmllib.py, restore the call to report_unbalanced() that was lost
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000212long ago. Also some other improvements: handle <? processing
213instructions >, allow . and - in entity names, and allow \r\n as line
214separator.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000215
216- Major upgrade to ConfigParser.py; converted to using 're', added new
Guido van Rossum6ca3def1998-08-10 16:36:48 +0000217exceptions, support underscore in section header and option name. No
218longer add 'name' option to every section; instead, add '__name__'.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000219
220- The ihooks.py module now understands package imports.
221
222- Some restructuring and generalization done to cmd.py.
223
224- Some restructuring and generalization done to multifile.py.
225
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000226- In cgi.py, treat "HEAD" the same as "GET", so that CGI scripts don't
227fail when someone asks for their HEAD. Also, for POST, set the
228default content-type to application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Also, in
229FieldStorage.__init__(), when method='GET', always get the query
230string from environ['QUERY_STRING'] or sys.argv[1] -- ignore an
231explicitly passed in fp.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000232
233- Improved imaplib.py.
234
235- In code.py, add a class that subsumes Fredrik Lundh's
236PythonInterpreter class. The interact() function now uses this.
237
238- In multifile.py, support a seekable flag.
239
240- Fixed UDP support in SocketServer.py, which never worked.
241
242- In rlcompleter.py, in completer(), return None instead of raising an
243IndexError when there are no more completions left.
244
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000245- In the string and strop modules, in the replace() function, treat an
246empty pattern as an error (since it's not clear what was meant!).
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000247
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000248- The gzip.py module didn't work together with cPickle. Fixed.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000249
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000250- Fixed a small bug in CGIHTTPServer.py.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000251
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000252- In whichdb.py, support byte-swapped dbhash (bsddb) files.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000253
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000254- In anydbm.py, look at the type of an existing database to determine
255which module to use to open it. (The anydbm.error exception is now a
256tuple.)
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000257
258Extension modules
259-----------------
260
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000261- In the socket module: new function gethostbyname_ex(). Also, don't
262use #ifdef to test for some symbols that are enums on some platforms
263(and should exist everywhere).
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000264
265- Added some of the "wait status inspection" macros as functions:
266WEXITSTATUS(), WIFEXITED(), WIFSIGNALED(), WIFSTOPPED(), WSTOPSIG(),
267WTERMSIG().
268
269- In cStringIO, add better argument type checking and support the
270readonly 'closed' attribute (like regular files).
271
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000272- In the struct module, unsigned 1-2 byte sized formats no longer
273result in long integer values.
274
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000275- In the termios module, in tcsetattr(), initialize the structure vy
276calling tcgetattr().
277
278- In the time module, add strptime(), if it exists. (This parses a
279time according to a format -- the inverse of strftime().) Also,
280remove the call to mktime() from strftime() -- it messed up the
281formatting of some non-local times.
282
283- Fixed the marshal module to test for certain common kinds of invalid
284input. (It's still not foolproof!)
285
286- In the operator module, add an alias (now the preferred name)
287"contains" for "sequenceincludes".
288
289- In the syslog module, make the default facility more intuitive
290(matching the docs).
291
292Tkinter
293-------
294
295- On Unix, Tkinter can now safely be used from a multi-threaded
296application. (Formerly, no threads would make progress while
297Tkinter's mainloop() was active, because it didn't release the Python
298interpreter lock.) Unfortunately, on Windows, threads other than the
299main thread should not call update() or update_idletasks() because
300this will deadlock the application.
301
302- An interactive interpreter that uses readline and Tkinter no longer
303uses up all available CPU time.
304
305- Even if readline is not used, Tk windows created in an interactive
306interpreter now get continuously updated. (This even works in Windows
307as long as you don't hit a key.)
308
309- New demos in Demo/tkinter/guido/: brownian.py, redemo.py, switch.py.
310
311- No longer register Tcl_finalize() as a low-level exit handler. It
312may call back into Python, and that's a bad idea.
313
314- Allow binding of Tcl commands (given as a string).
315
316- Some minor speedups; replace explicitly coded getint() with int() in
317most places.
318
319- In FileDialog.py, remember the directory of the selected file, if
320given.
321
322- Change the names of all methods in the Wm class: they are now
323wm_title(), etc. The old names (title() etc.) are still defined as
324aliases.
325
326- Add a new method of interpreter objects, interpaddr(). This returns
327the address of the Tcl interpreter object, as an integer. Not very
328useful for the Python programmer, but this can be called by another C
329extension that needs to make calls into the Tcl/Tk C API and needs to
330get the address of the Tcl interpreter object. A simple cast of the
331return value to (Tcl_Interp *) will do the trick.
332
333Windows
334-------
335
336- The registry key used is now "1.5" instead of "1.5.x" -- so future
337versions of 1.5 and Mark Hammond's win32all installer don't need to be
338resynchronized.
339
340- The project files have been moved so they are distributed in the
341same subdirectory (PCbuild) where they must be used; this avoids
342confusion.
343
344- New project files for Windows 3.1 port by Jim Ahlstrom.
345
346- Got rid of the obsolete subdirectory PC/setup_nt/.
347
348- os.environ is now all uppercase, but accesses are case insensitive.
349
350- Don't insist on proper case for module source files if the filename
351is all uppercase (e.g. FOO.PY now matches foo; but FOO.py still
352doesn't). This should address problems with this feature on
353oldfashioned filesystems (Novell servers?).
354
355- Fixed os.pipe() so that it returns file descriptors acceptable to
356os.read() and os.write() (like it does on Unix), rather than Windows
357file handles.
358
359- In the select module, put the (huge) file descriptor arrays on the heap.
360
361- The getpass module now raises KeyboardInterrupt when it sees ^C.
362
363- Changes to os.py: os.environ now upcases keys before storing them on
364Windows, DOS and OS/2.
365
366- In mailbox.py, fix tell/seek when using files opened in text mode.
367
368- In rfc822.py, fix tell/seek when using files opened in text mode.
369
370- Several improvements to freeze (mostly, but not exclusively for
371Windows).
372
373- Moved the VC++ project files and the WISE installer script from PC
374to PCbuild.
375
376- The projects now use distinct filenames for the .exe, .dll, .lib and
377.pyd files built in debug mode (by appending "_d" to the base name,
378before the extension). This makes it easier to switch between the two
379and get the right versions. There's a pragma in config.h that directs
380the linker to include the appropriate .lib file (so python15.lib no
381longer needs to be explicit in your project).
382
383- In the msvcrt extension module, release the interpreter lock for
384calls that may block: _locking(), _getch(), _getche(). Also fix a
385bogus error return when open_osfhandle() doesn't have the right
386argument list.
387
388- Revert a new feature in Unix dynamic loading: for one or two
389revisions, modules were loaded using the RTLD_GLOBAL flag. It turned
390out to be a bad idea.
391
392- The installer now installs more files (e.g. config.h). The idea is
393that you shouldn't need the source distribution if you want build your
394own extensions in C or C++.
395
396- Fixed a very old bug in the parsing of "O?" format specifiers.
397
398- Added a table of WSA error codes to socket.py.
399
400- Removed samefile(), sameopenfile(), samestat() from os.path (aka
401ntpath.py) -- these cannot be made to work reliably (at least I
402wouldn't know how).
403
404Tools and Demos
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000405---------------
406
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000407- New script nm2def.py by Marc-Andre Lemburg, to construct
408PC/python_nt.def automatically (some hand editing still required).
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000409
410- New tool ndiff.py: Tim Peters' text diffing tool.
411
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000412- Various and sundry improvements to the freeze script.
413
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000414- The script texi2html.py (which was part of the Doc tree but is no
415longer used there) has been moved to the Tools/scripts subdirectory.
416
417- Some generalizations in the webchecker code. There's now a
418primnitive gui for websucker.py: wsgui.py. (In Tools/webchecker/.)
419
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000420- The ftpmirror.py script now handles symbolic links properly, and
421also files with multiple spaces in their names.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000422
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000423- The 1.5.1 tabnanny.py suffers an assert error if fed a script whose
424last line is both indented and lacks a newline. This is now fixed.
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000425
426Python/C API
427------------
428
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000429- Added missing prototypes for PyEval_CallFunction() and
430PyEval_CallMethod().
431
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000432- New APIs for conversion between Python longs and C 'long long' if
433your compiler supports it.
434
435- The code that initializes sys.path now calls Py_GetPythonHome()
436instead of getenv("PYTHONHOME"). This, together with the new API
437Py_SetPythonHome(), makes it easier for embedding applications to
438change the notion of Python's "home" directory (where the libraries
439etc. are sought).
440
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000441- Changes to PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Lis(t) to use the
Guido van Rossumf5475c91998-08-06 17:55:46 +0000442length of a sequence only as a hint -- if an IndexError happens
443earlier, take that. (Formerly, this was considered an error.)
444
445- New macros to access object members for PyFunction, PyCFunction
446objects.
447
448- New APIs PyImport_AppendInittab() an PyImport_ExtendInittab() to
449dynamically add one or many entries to the table of built-in modules.
450
451- New macro Py_InitModule3(name, methods, doc) which calls
452Py_InitModule4() with appropriate arguments. (The -4 variant requires
453you to pass an obscure version number constant which is always the same.)
454
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000455- Reformatted abstract.c to give it a more familiar "look" and fixed
456many error checking bugs.
457
458- Add NULL pointer checks to all calls of a C function through a type
459object and extensions (e.g. nb_add).
460
461- PySequence_In() is now called PySequence_Contains().
462(PySequence_In() is still supported for b/w compatibility; it is
463declared obsolete because its argument order is confusing.)
464
465- PyDict_GetItem() and PyDict_GetItemString() are changed so that they
466*never* raise an exception -- (even if the hash() fails, simply clear
467the error). This was necessary because there is lots of code out
468there that already assumes this.
469
470- New APIs PySys_WriteStdout() and PySys_WriteStderr() to write to
471sys.stdout or sys.stderr using a printf-like interface. (Used in
472_tkinter.c, for example.)
473
474- New macro PyList_SET_ITEM().
475
476
477======================================================================
478
479
Guido van Rossumc45cf021998-04-10 20:06:21 +0000480From 1.5 to 1.5.1
481=================
482
483General
484-------
485
486- The documentation is now unbundled. It has also been extensively
487modified (mostly to implement a new and more uniform formatting
488style). We figure that most people will prefer to download one of the
489preformatted documentation sets (HTML, PostScript or PDF) and that
490only a minority have a need for the LaTeX or FrameMaker sources. Of
491course, the unbundled documentation sources still released -- just not
492in the same archive file, and perhaps not on the same date.
493
494- All bugs noted on the errors page (and many unnoted) are fixed. All
495new bugs take their places.
496
Guido van Rossum974f2951998-04-13 21:00:54 +0000497- No longer a core dump when attempting to print (or repr(), or str())
498a list or dictionary that contains an instance of itself; instead, the
499recursive entry is printed as [...] or {...}. See Py_ReprEnter() and
500Py_ReprLeave() below. Comparisons of such objects still go beserk,
501since this requires a different kind of fix; fortunately, this is a
502less common scenario in practice.
503
Guido van Rossumc45cf021998-04-10 20:06:21 +0000504Syntax change
505-------------
506
507- The raise statement can now be used without arguments, to re-raise
508a previously set exception. This should be used after catching an
509exception with an except clause only, either in the except clause or
510later in the same function.
511
512Import and module handling
513--------------------------
514
515- The implementation of import has changed to use a mutex (when
516threading is supported). This means that when two threads
517simultaneously import the same module, the import statements are
518serialized. Recursive imports are not affected.
519
520- Rewrote the finalization code almost completely, to be much more
521careful with the order in which modules are destroyed. Destructors
Guido van Rossumfc8f5d11998-08-04 22:58:51 +0000522will now generally be able to reference built-in names such as None
Guido van Rossumc45cf021998-04-10 20:06:21 +0000523without trouble.
524
Guido van Rossum974f2951998-04-13 21:00:54 +0000525- Case-insensitive platforms such as Mac and Windows require the case
526of a module's filename to match the case of the module name as
527specified in the import statement (see below).
Guido van Rossumc45cf021998-04-10 20:06:21 +0000528
529- The code for figuring out the default path now distinguishes between
530files, modules, executable files, and directories. When expecting a
531module, we also look for the .pyc or .pyo file.
532
533Parser/tokenizer changes
534------------------------
535
536- The tokenizer can now warn you when your source code mixes tabs and
Guido van Rossum974f2951998-04-13 21:00:54 +0000537spaces for indentation in a manner that depends on how much a tab is
538worth in spaces. Use "python -t" or "python -v" to enable this
539option. Use "python -tt" to turn the warnings into errors. (See also
540tabnanny.py and tabpolice.py below.)
Guido van Rossumc45cf021998-04-10 20:06:21 +0000541
542- Return unsigned characters from tok_nextc(), so '\377' isn't
543mistaken for an EOF character.
544
545- Fixed two pernicious bugs in the tokenizer that only affected AIX.
546One was actually a general bug that was triggered by AIX's smaller I/O
547buffer size. The other was a bug in the AIX optimizer's loop
548unrolling code; swapping two statements made the problem go away.
549
550Tools, demos and miscellaneous files
551------------------------------------
552
553- There's a new version of Misc/python-mode.el (the Emacs mode for
554Python) which is much smarter about guessing the indentation style
555used in a particular file. Lots of other cool features too!
556
557- There are two new tools in Tools/scripts: tabnanny.py and
558tabpolice.py, implementing two different ways of checking whether a
559file uses indentation in a way that is sensitive to the interpretation
560of a tab. The preferred module is tabnanny.py (by Tim Peters).
561
562- Some new demo programs:
563
564 Demo/tkinter/guido/paint.py -- Dave Mitchell
565 Demo/sockets/unixserver.py -- Piet van Oostrum
566
567
568- Much better freeze support. The freeze script can now freeze
569hierarchical module names (with a corresponding change to import.c),
570and has a few extra options (e.g. to suppress freezing specific
571modules). It also does much more on Windows NT.
572
573- Version 1.0 of the faq wizard is included (only very small changes
574since version 0.9.0).
575
576- New feature for the ftpmirror script: when removing local files
577(i.e., only when -r is used), do a recursive delete.
578
579Configuring and building Python
580-------------------------------
581
582- Get rid of the check for -linet -- recent Sequent Dynix systems don't
583need this any more and apparently it screws up their configuration.
584
585- Some changes because gcc on SGI doesn't support '-all'.
586
587- Changed the build rules to use $(LIBRARY) instead of
588 -L.. -lpython$(VERSION)
589since the latter trips up the SunOS 4.1.x linker (sigh).
590
591- Fix the bug where the '# dgux is broken' comment in the Makefile
592tripped over Make on some platforms.
593
594- Changes for AIX: install the python.exp file; properly use
595$(srcdir); the makexp_aix script now removes C++ entries of the form
596Class::method.
597
598- Deleted some Makefile targets only used by the (long obsolete)
599gMakefile hacks.
600
601Extension modules
602-----------------
603
604- Performance and threading improvements to the socket and bsddb
605modules, by Christopher Lindblad of Infoseek.
606
607- Added operator.__not__ and operator.not_.
608
609- In the thread module, when a thread exits due to an unhandled
610exception, don't store the exception information in sys.last_*; it
611prevents proper calling of destructors of local variables.
612
613- Fixed a number of small bugs in the cPickle module.
614
615- Changed find() and rfind() in the strop module so that
616find("x","",2) returns -1, matching the implementation in string.py.
617
618- In the time module, be more careful with the result of ctime(), and
619test for HAVE_MKTIME before usinmg mktime().
620
621- Doc strings contributed by Mitch Chapman to the termios, pwd, gdbm
622modules.
623
624- Added the LOG_SYSLOG constant to the syslog module, if defined.
625
626Standard library modules
627------------------------
628
629- All standard library modules have been converted to an indentation
630style using either only tabs or only spaces -- never a mixture -- if
Guido van Rossum974f2951998-04-13 21:00:54 +0000631they weren't already consistent according to tabnanny. This means
632that the new -t option (see above) won't complain about standard
633library modules.
Guido van Rossumc45cf021998-04-10 20:06:21 +0000634
635- New standard library modules:
636
637 threading -- GvR and the thread-sig
638 Java style thread objects -- USE THIS!!!
639
640 getpass -- Piers Lauder
641 simple utilities to prompt for a password and to
642 retrieve the current username
643
644 imaplib -- Piers Lauder
645 interface for the IMAP4 protocol
646
647 poplib -- David Ascher, Piers Lauder
648 interface for the POP3 protocol
649
650 smtplib -- Dragon De Monsyne
651 interface for the SMTP protocol
652
653- Some obsolete modules moved to a separate directory (Lib/lib-old)
654which is *not* in the default module search path:
655
656 Para
657 addpack
658 codehack
659 fmt
660 lockfile
661 newdir
662 ni
663 rand
664 tb
665
666- New version of the PCRE code (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions --
667the re module and the supporting pcre extension) by Andrew Kuchling.
668Incompatible new feature in re.sub(): the handling of escapes in the
669replacement string has changed.
670
Guido van Rossum974f2951998-04-13 21:00:54 +0000671- Interface change in the copy module: a __deepcopy__ method is now
672called with the memo dictionary as an argument.
Guido van Rossumc45cf021998-04-10 20:06:21 +0000673
674- Feature change in the tokenize module: differentiate between NEWLINE
675token (an official newline) and NL token (a newline that the grammar
676ignores).
677
678- Several bugfixes to the urllib module. It is now truly thread-safe,
679and several bugs and a portability problem have been fixed. New
680features, all due to Sjoerd Mullender: When creating a temporary file,
681it gives it an appropriate suffix. Support the "data:" URL scheme.
682The open() method uses the tempcache.
683
684- New version of the xmllib module (this time with a test suite!) by
685Sjoerd Mullender.
686
687- Added debugging code to the telnetlib module, to be able to trace
688the actual traffic.
689
690- In the rfc822 module, added support for deleting a header (still no
691support for adding headers, though). Also fixed a bug where an
692illegal address would cause a crash in getrouteaddr(), fixed a
693sign reversal in mktime_tz(), and use the local timezone by default
694(the latter two due to Bill van Melle).
695
696- The normpath() function in the dospath and ntpath modules no longer
697does case normalization -- for that, use the separate function
698normcase() (which always existed); normcase() has been sped up and
699fixed (it was the cause of a crash in Mark Hammond's installer in
700certain locales).
701
702- New command supported by the ftplib module: rmd(); also fixed some
703minor bugs.
704
705- The profile module now uses a different timer function by default --
706time.clock() is generally better than os.times(). This makes it work
707better on Windows NT, too.
708
709- The tempfile module now recovers when os.getcwd() raises an
710exception.
711
712- Fixed some bugs in the random module; gauss() was subtly wrong, and
713vonmisesvariate() should return a full circle. Courtesy Mike Miller,
714Lambert Meertens (gauss()), and Magnus Kessler (vonmisesvariate()).
715
716- Better default seed in the whrandom module, courtesy Andrew Kuchling.
717
718- Fix slow close() in shelve module.
719
720- The Unix mailbox class in the mailbox module is now more robust when
721a line begins with the string "From " but is definitely not the start
722of a new message. The pattern used can be changed by overriding a
723method or class variable.
724
725- Added a rmtree() function to the copy module.
726
727- Fixed several typos in the pickle module. Also fixed problems when
728unpickling in restricted execution environments.
729
730- Added docstrings and fixed a typo in the py_compile and compileall
731modules. At Mark Hammond's repeated request, py_compile now append a
732newline to the source if it needs one. Both modules support an extra
733parameter to specify the purported source filename (to be used in
734error messages).
735
736- Some performance tweaks by Jeremy Hylton to the gzip module.
737
738- Fixed a bug in the merge order of dictionaries in the ConfigParser
739module. Courtesy Barry Warsaw.
740
741- In the multifile module, support the optional second parameter to
742seek() when possible.
743
744- Several fixes to the gopherlib module by Lars Marius Garshol. Also,
745urlparse now correctly handles Gopher URLs with query strings.
746
747- Fixed a tiny bug in format_exception() in the traceback module.
748Also rewrite tb_lineno() to be compatible with JPython (and not
749disturb the current exception!); by Jim Hugunin.
750
751- The httplib module is more robust when servers send a short response
752-- courtesy Tim O'Malley.
753
754Tkinter and friends
755-------------------
756
757- Various typos and bugs fixed.
758
759- New module Tkdnd implements a drag-and-drop protocol (within one
760application only).
761
762- The event_*() widget methods have been restructured slightly -- they
763no longer use the default root.
764
765- The interfaces for the bind*() and unbind() widget methods have been
766redesigned; the bind*() methods now return the name of the Tcl command
767created for the callback, and this can be passed as a optional
768argument to unbind() in order to delete the command (normally, such
769commands are automatically unbound when the widget is destroyed, but
770for some applications this isn't enough).
771
772- Variable objects now have trace methods to interface to Tcl's
773variable tracing facilities.
774
775- Image objects now have an optional keyword argument, 'master', to
776specify a widget (tree) to which they belong. The image_names() and
777image_types() calls are now also widget methods.
778
779- There's a new global call, Tkinter.NoDefaultRoot(), which disables
780all use of the default root by the Tkinter library. This is useful to
781debug applications that are in the process of being converted from
782relying on the default root to explicit specification of the root
783widget.
784
785- The 'exit' command is deleted from the Tcl interpreter, since it
786provided a loophole by which one could (accidentally) exit the Python
787interpreter without invoking any cleanup code.
788
789- Tcl_Finalize() is now registered as a Python low-level exit handle,
790so Tcl will be finalized when Python exits.
791
792The Python/C API
793----------------
794
Guido van Rossum974f2951998-04-13 21:00:54 +0000795- New function PyThreadState_GetDict() returns a per-thread dictionary
796intended for storing thread-local global variables.
797
798- New functions Py_ReprEnter() and Py_ReprLeave() use the per-thread
799dictionary to allow recursive container types to detect recursion in
800their repr(), str() and print implementations.
801
Guido van Rossumc45cf021998-04-10 20:06:21 +0000802- New function PyObject_Not(x) calculates (not x) according to Python's
803standard rules (basically, it negates the outcome PyObject_IsTrue(x).
804
805- New function _PyModule_Clear(), which clears a module's dictionary
806carefully without removing the __builtins__ entry. This is implied
807when a module object is deallocated (this used to clear the dictionary
808completely).
809
810- New function PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(), which extends
811PyImport_ExecCodeModule() by adding an extra parameter to pass it the
812true file.
813
814- New functions Py_GetPythonHome() and Py_SetPythonHome(), intended to
815allow embedded applications to force a different value for PYTHONHOME.
816
817- New global flag Py_FrozenFlag is set when this is a "frozen" Python
818binary; it suppresses warnings about not being able to find the
819standard library directories.
820
821- New global flag Py_TabcheckFlag is incremented by the -t option and
822causes the tokenizer to issue warnings or errors about inconsistent
823mixing of tabs and spaces for indentation.
824
825Miscellaneous minor changes and bug fixes
826-----------------------------------------
827
828- Improved the error message when an attribute of an attribute-less
829object is requested -- include the name of the attribute and the type
830of the object in the message.
831
832- Sped up int(), long(), float() a bit.
833
834- Fixed a bug in list.sort() that would occasionally dump core.
835
836- Fixed a bug in PyNumber_Power() that caused numeric arrays to fail
837when taken tothe real power.
838
839- Fixed a number of bugs in the file reading code, at least one of
840which could cause a core dump on NT, and one of which would
841occasionally cause file.read() to return less than the full contents
842of the file.
843
844- Performance hack by Vladimir Marangozov for stack frame creation.
845
846- Make sure setvbuf() isn't used unless HAVE_SETVBUF is defined.
847
Guido van Rossum974f2951998-04-13 21:00:54 +0000848Windows 95/NT
849-------------
850
851- The .lib files are now part of the distribution; they are collected
852in the subdirectory "libs" of the installation directory.
853
854- The extension modules (.pyd files) are now collected in a separate
855subdirectory of the installation directory named "DLLs".
856
857- The case of a module's filename must now match the case of the
858module name as specified in the import statement. This is an
859experimental feature -- if it turns out to break in too many
860situations, it will be removed (or disabled by default) in the future.
861It can be disabled on a per-case basis by setting the environment
862variable PYTHONCASEOK (to any value).
863
864
Guido van Rossumc45cf021998-04-10 20:06:21 +0000865======================================================================
866
867
868From 1.5b2 to 1.5
869=================
870
871- Newly documentated module: BaseHTTPServer.py, thanks to Greg Stein.
872
873- Added doc strings to string.py, stropmodule.c, structmodule.c,
874thanks to Charles Waldman.
875
876- Many nits fixed in the manuals, thanks to Fred Drake and many others
877(especially Rob Hooft and Andrew Kuchling). The HTML version now uses
878HTML markup instead of inline GIF images for tables; only two images
879are left (for obsure bits of math). The index of the HTML version has
880also been much improved. Finally, it is once again possible to
881generate an Emacs info file from the library manual (but I don't
882commit to supporting this in future versions).
883
884- New module: telnetlib.py (a simple telnet client library).
885
886- New tool: Tools/versioncheck/, by Jack Jansen.
887
888- Ported zlibmodule.c and bsddbmodule.c to NT; The project file for MS
889DevStudio 5.0 now includes new subprojects to build the zlib and bsddb
890extension modules.
891
892- Many small changes again to Tkinter.py -- mostly bugfixes and adding
893missing routines. Thanks to Greg McFarlane for reporting a bunch of
894problems and proofreading my fixes.
895
896- The re module and its documentation are up to date with the latest
897version released to the string-sig (Dec. 22).
898
899- Stop test_grp.py from failing when the /etc/group file is empty
900(yes, this happens!).
901
902- Fix bug in integer conversion (mystrtoul.c) that caused
9034294967296==0 to be true!
904
905- The VC++ 4.2 project file should be complete again.
906
907- In tempfile.py, use a better template on NT, and add a new optional
908argument "suffix" with default "" to specify a specific extension for
909the temporary filename (needed sometimes on NT but perhaps also handy
910elsewhere).
911
912- Fixed some bugs in the FAQ wizard, and converted it to use re
913instead of regex.
914
915- Fixed a mysteriously undetected error in dlmodule.c (it was using a
916totally bogus routine name to raise an exception).
917
918- Fixed bug in import.c which wasn't using the new "dos-8x3" name yet.
919
920- Hopefully harmless changes to the build process to support shared
921libraries on DG/UX. This adds a target to create
922libpython$(VERSION).so; however this target is *only* for DG/UX.
923
924- Fixed a bug in the new format string error checking in getargs.c.
925
926- A simple fix for infinite recursion when printing __builtins__:
927reset '_' to None before printing and set it to the printed variable
928*after* printing (and only when printing is successful).
929
930- Fixed lib-tk/SimpleDialog.py to keep the dialog visible even if the
931parent window is not (Skip Montanaro).
932
933- Fixed the two most annoying problems with ftp URLs in
934urllib.urlopen(); an empty file now correctly raises an error, and it
935is no longer required to explicitly close the returned "file" object
936before opening another ftp URL to the same host and directory.
937
938
939======================================================================
940
941
942From 1.5b1 to 1.5b2
943===================
944
945- Fixed a bug in cPickle.c that caused it to crash right away because
946the version string had a different format.
947
948- Changes in pickle.py and cPickle.c: when unpickling an instance of a
949class that doesn't define the __getinitargs__() method, the __init__()
950constructor is no longer called. This makes a much larger group of
951classes picklable by default, but may occasionally change semantics.
952To force calling __init__() on unpickling, define a __getinitargs__()
953method. Other changes too, in particular cPickle now handles classes
954defined in packages correctly. The same change applies to copying
955instances with copy.py. The cPickle.c changes and some pickle.py
956changes are courtesy Jim Fulton.
957
958- Locale support in he "re" (Perl regular expressions) module. Use
959the flag re.L (or re.LOCALE) to enable locale-specific matching
960rules for \w and \b. The in-line syntax for this flag is (?L).
961
962- The built-in function isinstance(x, y) now also succeeds when y is
963a type object and type(x) is y.
964
965- repr() and str() of class and instance objects now reflect the
966package/module in which the class is defined.
967
968- Module "ni" has been removed. (If you really need it, it's been
969renamed to "ni1". Let me know if this causes any problems for you.
970Package authors are encouraged to write __init__.py files that
971support both ni and 1.5 package support, so the same version can be
972used with Python 1.4 as well as 1.5.)
973
974- The thread module is now automatically included when threads are
975configured. (You must remove it from your existing Setup file,
976since it is now in its own Setup.thread file.)
977
978- New command line option "-x" to skip the first line of the script;
979handy to make executable scripts on non-Unix platforms.
980
981- In importdl.c, add the RTLD_GLOBAL to the dlopen() flags. I
982haven't checked how this affects things, but it should make symbols
983in one shared library available to the next one.
984
985- The Windows installer now installs in the "Program Files" folder on
986the proper volume by default.
987
988- The Windows configuration adds a new main program, "pythonw", and
989registers a new extension, ".pyw" that invokes this. This is a
990pstandard Python interpreter that does not pop up a console window;
991handy for pure Tkinter applications. All output to the original
992stdout and stderr is lost; reading from the original stdin yields
993EOF. Also, both python.exe and pythonw.exe now have a pretty icon
994(a green snake in a box, courtesy Mark Hammond).
995
996- Lots of improvements to emacs-mode.el again. See Barry's web page:
997http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html.
998
999- Lots of improvements and additions to the library reference manual;
1000many by Fred Drake.
1001
1002- Doc strings for the following modules: rfc822.py, posixpath.py,
1003ntpath.py, httplib.py. Thanks to Mitch Chapman and Charles Waldman.
1004
1005- Some more regression testing.
1006
1007- An optional 4th (maxsplit) argument to strop.replace().
1008
1009- Fixed handling of maxsplit in string.splitfields().
1010
1011- Tweaked os.environ so it can be pickled and copied.
1012
1013- The portability problems caused by indented preprocessor commands
1014and C++ style comments should be gone now.
1015
1016- In random.py, added Pareto and Weibull distributions.
1017
1018- The crypt module is now disabled in Modules/Setup.in by default; it
1019is rarely needed and causes errors on some systems where users often
1020don't know how to deal with those.
1021
1022- Some improvements to the _tkinter build line suggested by Case Roole.
1023
1024- A full suite of platform specific files for NetBSD 1.x, submitted by
1025Anders Andersen.
1026
1027- New Solaris specific header STROPTS.py.
1028
1029- Moved a confusing occurrence of *shared* from the comments in
1030Modules/Setup.in (people would enable this one instead of the real
1031one, and get disappointing results).
1032
1033- Changed the default mode for directories to be group-writable when
1034the installation process creates them.
1035
1036- Check for pthread support in "-l_r" for FreeBSD/NetBSD, and support
1037shared libraries for both.
1038
1039- Support FreeBSD and NetBSD in posixfile.py.
1040
1041- Support for the "event" command, new in Tk 4.2. By Case Roole.
1042
1043- Add Tix_SafeInit() support to tkappinit.c.
1044
1045- Various bugs fixed in "re.py" and "pcre.c".
1046
1047- Fixed a bug (broken use of the syntax table) in the old "regexpr.c".
1048
1049- In frozenmain.c, stdin is made unbuffered too when PYTHONUNBUFFERED
1050is set.
1051
1052- Provide default blocksize for retrbinary in ftplib.py (Skip
1053Montanaro).
1054
1055- In NT, pick the username up from different places in user.py (Jeff
1056Bauer).
1057
1058- Patch to urlparse.urljoin() for ".." and "..#1", Marc Lemburg.
1059
1060- Many small improvements to Jeff Rush' OS/2 support.
1061
1062- ospath.py is gone; it's been obsolete for so many years now...
1063
1064- The reference manual is now set up to prepare better HTML (still
1065using webmaker, alas).
1066
1067- Add special handling to /Tools/freeze for Python modules that are
1068imported implicitly by the Python runtime: 'site' and 'exceptions'.
1069
1070- Tools/faqwiz 0.8.3 -- add an option to suppress URL processing
1071inside <PRE>, by "Scott".
1072
1073- Added ConfigParser.py, a generic parser for sectioned configuration
1074files.
1075
1076- In _localemodule.c, LC_MESSAGES is not always defined; put it
1077between #ifdefs.
1078
1079- Typo in resource.c: RUSAGE_CHILDERN -> RUSAGE_CHILDREN.
1080
1081- Demo/scripts/newslist.py: Fix the way the version number is gotten
1082out of the RCS revision.
1083
1084- PyArg_Parse[Tuple] now explicitly check for bad characters at the
1085end of the format string.
1086
1087- Revamped PC/example_nt to support VC++ 5.x.
1088
1089- <listobject>.sort() now uses a modified quicksort by Raymund Galvin,
1090after studying the GNU libg++ quicksort. This should be much faster
1091if there are lots of duplicates, and otherwise at least as good.
1092
1093- Added "uue" as an alias for "uuencode" to mimetools.py. (Hm, the
1094uudecode bug where it complaints about trailing garbage is still there
1095:-( ).
1096
1097- pickle.py requires integers in text mode to be in decimal notation
1098(it used to accept octal and hex, even though it would only generate
1099decimal numbers).
1100
1101- In string.atof(), don't fail when the "re" module is unavailable.
1102Plug the ensueing security leak by supplying an empty __builtins__
1103directory to eval().
1104
1105- A bunch of small fixes and improvements to Tkinter.py.
1106
1107- Fixed a buffer overrun in PC/getpathp.c.
1108
1109
1110======================================================================
1111
1112
1113From 1.5a4 to 1.5b1
1114===================
1115
1116- The Windows NT/95 installer now includes full HTML of all manuals.
1117It also has a checkbox that lets you decide whether to install the
1118interpreter and library. The WISE installer script for the installer
1119is included in the source tree as PC/python15.wse, and so are the
1120icons used for Python files. The config.c file for the Windows build
1121is now complete with the pcre module.
1122
1123- sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 can now arbitrary objects; their str() is
1124evaluated for the prompt.
1125
1126- The reference manual is brought up to date (more or less -- it still
1127needs work, e.g. in the area of package import).
1128
1129- The icons used by latex2html are now included in the Doc
1130subdirectory (mostly so that tarring up the HTML files can be fully
1131automated). A simple index.html is also added to Doc (it only works
1132after you have successfully run latex2html).
1133
1134- For all you would-be proselytizers out there: a new version of
1135Misc/BLURB describes Python more concisely, and Misc/comparisons
1136compares Python to several other languages. Misc/BLURB.WINDOWS
1137contains a blurb specifically aimed at Windows programmers (by Mark
1138Hammond).
1139
1140- A new version of the Python mode for Emacs is included as
1141Misc/python-mode.el. There are too many new features to list here.
1142See http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html for more info.
1143
1144- New module fileinput makes iterating over the lines of a list of
1145files easier. (This still needs some more thinking to make it more
1146extensible.)
1147
1148- There's full OS/2 support, courtesy Jeff Rush. To build the OS/2
1149version, see PC/readme.txt and PC/os2vacpp. This is for IBM's Visual
1150Age C++ compiler. I expect that Jeff will also provide a binary
1151release for this platform.
1152
1153- On Linux, the configure script now uses '-Xlinker -export-dynamic'
1154instead of '-rdynamic' to link the main program so that it exports its
1155symbols to shared libraries it loads dynamically. I hope this doesn't
1156break on older Linux versions; it is needed for mklinux and appears to
1157work on Linux 2.0.30.
1158
1159- Some Tkinter resstructuring: the geometry methods that apply to a
1160master are now properly usable on toplevel master widgets. There's a
1161new (internal) widget class, BaseWidget. New, longer "official" names
1162for the geometry manager methods have been added,
1163e.g. "grid_columnconfigure()" instead of "columnconfigure()". The old
1164shorter names still work, and where there's ambiguity, pack wins over
1165place wins over grid. Also, the bind_class method now returns its
1166value.
1167
1168- New, RFC-822 conformant parsing of email addresses and address lists
1169in the rfc822 module, courtesy Ben Escoto.
1170
1171- New, revamped tkappinit.c with support for popular packages (PIL,
1172TIX, BLT, TOGL). For the last three, you need to execute the Tcl
1173command "load {} Tix" (or Blt, or Togl) to gain access to them.
1174The Modules/Setup line for the _tkinter module has been rewritten
1175using the cool line-breaking feature of most Bourne shells.
1176
1177- New socket method connect_ex() returns the error code from connect()
1178instead of raising an exception on errors; this makes the logic
1179required for asynchronous connects simpler and more efficient.
1180
1181- New "locale" module with (still experimental) interface to the
1182standard C library locale interface, courtesy Martin von Loewis. This
1183does not repeat my mistake in 1.5a4 of always calling
1184setlocale(LC_ALL, ""). In fact, we've pretty much decided that
1185Python's standard numerical formatting operations should always use
1186the conventions for the C locale; the locale module contains utility
1187functions to format numbers according to the user specified locale.
1188(All this is accomplished by an explicit call to setlocale(LC_NUMERIC,
1189"C") after locale-changing calls.) See the library manual. (Alas, the
1190promised changes to the "re" module for locale support have not been
1191materialized yet. If you care, volunteer!)
1192
1193- Memory leak plugged in Py_BuildValue when building a dictionary.
1194
1195- Shared modules can now live inside packages (hierarchical module
1196namespaces). No changes to the shared module itself are needed.
1197
1198- Improved policy for __builtins__: this is a module in __main__ and a
1199dictionary everywhere else.
1200
1201- Python no longer catches SIGHUP and SIGTERM by default. This was
1202impossible to get right in the light of thread contexts. If you want
1203your program to clean up when a signal happens, use the signal module
1204to set up your own signal handler.
1205
1206- New Python/C API PyNumber_CoerceEx() does not return an exception
1207when no coercion is possible. This is used to fix a problem where
1208comparing incompatible numbers for equality would raise an exception
1209rather than return false as in Python 1.4 -- it once again will return
1210false.
1211
1212- The errno module is changed again -- the table of error messages
1213(errorstr) is removed. Instead, you can use os.strerror(). This
1214removes redundance and a potential locale dependency.
1215
1216- New module xmllib, to parse XML files. By Sjoerd Mullender.
1217
1218- New C API PyOS_AfterFork() is called after fork() in posixmodule.c.
1219It resets the signal module's notion of what the current process ID
1220and thread are, so that signal handlers will work after (and across)
1221calls to os.fork().
1222
1223- Fixed most occurrences of fatal errors due to missing thread state.
1224
1225- For vgrind (a flexible source pretty printer) fans, there's a simple
1226Python definition in Misc/vgrindefs, courtesy Neale Pickett.
1227
1228- Fixed memory leak in exec statement.
1229
1230- The test.pystone module has a new function, pystones(loops=LOOPS),
1231which returns a (benchtime, stones) tuple. The main() function now
1232calls this and prints the report.
1233
1234- Package directories now *require* the presence of an __init__.py (or
1235__init__.pyc) file before they are considered as packages. This is
1236done to prevent accidental subdirectories with common names from
1237overriding modules with the same name.
1238
1239- Fixed some strange exceptions in __del__ methods in library modules
1240(e.g. urllib). This happens because the builtin names are already
1241deleted by the time __del__ is called. The solution (a hack, but it
1242works) is to set some instance variables to 0 instead of None.
1243
1244- The table of built-in module initializers is replaced by a pointer
1245variable. This makes it possible to switch to a different table at
1246run time, e.g. when a collection of modules is loaded from a shared
1247library. (No example code of how to do this is given, but it is
1248possible.) The table is still there of course, its name prefixed with
1249an underscore and used to initialize the pointer.
1250
1251- The warning about a thread still having a frame now only happens in
1252verbose mode.
1253
1254- Change the signal finialization so that it also resets the signal
1255handlers. After this has been called, our signal handlers are no
1256longer active!
1257
1258- New version of tokenize.py (by Ka-Ping Yee) recognizes raw string
1259literals. There's now also a test fort this module.
1260
1261- The copy module now also uses __dict__.update(state) instead of
1262going through individual attribute assignments, for class instances
1263without a __setstate__ method.
1264
1265- New module reconvert translates old-style (regex module) regular
1266expressions to new-style (re module, Perl-style) regular expressions.
1267
1268- Most modules that used to use the regex module now use the re
1269module. The grep module has a new pgrep() function which uses
1270Perl-style regular expressions.
1271
1272- The (very old, backwards compatibility) regexp.py module has been
1273deleted.
1274
1275- Restricted execution (rexec): added the pcre module (support for the
1276re module) to the list of trusted extension modules.
1277
1278- New version of Jim Fulton's CObject object type, adds
1279PyCObject_FromVoidPtrAndDesc() and PyCObject_GetDesc() APIs.
1280
1281- Some patches to Lee Busby's fpectl mods that accidentally didn't
1282make it into 1.5a4.
1283
1284- In the string module, add an optional 4th argument to count(),
1285matching find() etc.
1286
1287- Patch for the nntplib module by Charles Waldman to add optional user
1288and password arguments to NNTP.__init__(), for nntp servers that need
1289them.
1290
1291- The str() function for class objects now returns
1292"modulename.classname" instead of returning the same as repr().
1293
1294- The parsing of \xXX escapes no longer relies on sscanf().
1295
1296- The "sharedmodules" subdirectory of the installation is renamed to
1297"lib-dynload". (You may have to edit your Modules/Setup file to fix
1298this in an existing installation!)
1299
1300- Fixed Don Beaudry's mess-up with the OPT test in the configure
1301script. Certain SGI platforms will still issue a warning for each
1302compile; there's not much I can do about this since the compiler's
1303exit status doesn't indicate that I was using an obsolete option.
1304
1305- Fixed Barry's mess-up with {}.get(), and added test cases for it.
1306
1307- Shared libraries didn't quite work under AIX because of the change
1308in status of the GNU readline interface. Fix due to by Vladimir
1309Marangozov.
1310
1311
1312======================================================================
1313
1314
1315From 1.5a3 to 1.5a4
1316===================
1317
1318- faqwiz.py: version 0.8; Recognize https:// as URL; <html>...</html>
1319feature; better install instructions; removed faqmain.py (which was an
1320older version).
1321
1322- nntplib.py: Fixed some bugs reported by Lars Wirzenius (to Debian)
1323about the treatment of lines starting with '.'. Added a minimal test
1324function.
1325
1326- struct module: ignore most whitespace in format strings.
1327
1328- urllib.py: close the socket and temp file in URLopener.retrieve() so
1329that multiple retrievals using the same connection work.
1330
1331- All standard exceptions are now classes by default; use -X to make
1332them strings (for backward compatibility only).
1333
1334- There's a new standard exception hierarchy, defined in the standard
1335library module exceptions.py (which you never need to import
1336explicitly). See
1337http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/stdexceptions.html for
1338more info.
1339
1340- Three new C API functions:
1341
1342 - int PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches(obj1, obj2)
1343
1344 Returns 1 if obj1 and obj2 are the same object, or if obj1 is an
1345 instance of type obj2, or of a class derived from obj2
1346
1347 - int PyErr_ExceptionMatches(obj)
1348
1349 Higher level wrapper around PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches() which uses
1350 PyErr_Occurred() as obj1. This will be the more commonly called
1351 function.
1352
1353 - void PyErr_NormalizeException(typeptr, valptr, tbptr)
1354
1355 Normalizes exceptions, and places the normalized values in the
1356 arguments. If type is not a class, this does nothing. If type is a
1357 class, then it makes sure that value is an instance of the class by:
1358
1359 1. if instance is of the type, or a class derived from type, it does
1360 nothing.
1361
1362 2. otherwise it instantiates the class, using the value as an
1363 argument. If value is None, it uses an empty arg tuple, and if
1364 the value is a tuple, it uses just that.
1365
1366- Another new C API function: PyErr_NewException() creates a new
1367exception class derived from Exception; when -X is given, it creates a
1368new string exception.
1369
1370- core interpreter: remove the distinction between tuple and list
1371unpacking; allow an arbitrary sequence on the right hand side of any
1372unpack instruction. (UNPACK_LIST and UNPACK_TUPLE now do the same
1373thing, which should really be called UNPACK_SEQUENCE.)
1374
1375- classes: Allow assignments to an instance's __dict__ or __class__,
1376so you can change ivars (including shared ivars -- shock horror) and
1377change classes dynamically. Also make the check on read-only
1378attributes of classes less draconic -- only the specials names
1379__dict__, __bases__, __name__ and __{get,set,del}attr__ can't be
1380assigned.
1381
1382- Two new built-in functions: issubclass() and isinstance(). Both
1383take classes as their second arguments. The former takes a class as
1384the first argument and returns true iff first is second, or is a
1385subclass of second. The latter takes any object as the first argument
1386and returns true iff first is an instance of the second, or any
1387subclass of second.
1388
1389- configure: Added configuration tests for presence of alarm(),
1390pause(), and getpwent().
1391
1392- Doc/Makefile: changed latex2html targets.
1393
1394- classes: Reverse the search order for the Don Beaudry hook so that
1395the first class with an applicable hook wins. Makes more sense.
1396
1397- Changed the checks made in Py_Initialize() and Py_Finalize(). It is
1398now legal to call these more than once. The first call to
1399Py_Initialize() initializes, the first call to Py_Finalize()
1400finalizes. There's also a new API, Py_IsInitalized() which checks
1401whether we are already initialized (in case you want to leave things
1402as they were).
1403
1404- Completely disable the declarations for malloc(), realloc() and
1405free(). Any 90's C compiler has these in header files, and the tests
1406to decide whether to suppress the declarations kept failing on some
1407platforms.
1408
1409- *Before* (instead of after) signalmodule.o is added, remove both
1410intrcheck.o and sigcheck.o. This should get rid of warnings in ar or
1411ld on various systems.
1412
1413- Added reop to PC/config.c
1414
1415- configure: Decided to use -Aa -D_HPUX_SOURCE on HP-UX platforms.
1416Removed outdated HP-UX comments from README. Added Cray T3E comments.
1417
1418- Various renames of statically defined functions that had name
1419conflicts on some systems, e.g. strndup (GNU libc), join (Cray),
1420roundup (sys/types.h).
1421
1422- urllib.py: Interpret three slashes in file: URL as local file (for
1423Netscape on Windows/Mac).
1424
1425- copy.py: Make sure the objects returned by __getinitargs__() are
1426kept alive (in the memo) to avoid a certain kind of nasty crash. (Not
1427easily reproducable because it requires a later call to
1428__getinitargs__() to return a tuple that happens to be allocated at
1429the same address.)
1430
1431- Added definition of AR to toplevel Makefile. Renamed @buildno temp
1432file to buildno1.
1433
1434- Moved Include/assert.h to Parser/assert.h, which seems to be the
1435only place where it's needed.
1436
1437- Tweaked the dictionary lookup code again for some more speed
1438(Vladimir Marangozov).
1439
1440- NT build: Changed the way python15.lib is included in the other
1441projects. Per Mark Hammond's suggestion, add it to the extra libs in
1442Settings instead of to the project's source files.
1443
1444- regrtest.py: Change default verbosity so that there are only three
1445levels left: -q, default and -v. In default mode, the name of each
1446test is now printed. -v is the same as the old -vv. -q is more quiet
1447than the old default mode.
1448
1449- Removed the old FAQ from the distribution. You now have to get it
1450from the web!
1451
1452- Removed the PC/make_nt.in file from the distribution; it is no
1453longer needed.
1454
1455- Changed the build sequence so that shared modules are built last.
1456This fixes things for AIX and doesn't hurt elsewhere.
1457
1458- Improved test for GNU MP v1 in mpzmodule.c
1459
1460- fileobject.c: ftell() on Linux discards all buffered data; changed
1461read() code to use lseek() instead to get the same effect
1462
1463- configure.in, configure, importdl.c: NeXT sharedlib fixes
1464
1465- tupleobject.c: PyTuple_SetItem asserts refcnt==1
1466
1467- resource.c: Different strategy regarding whether to declare
1468getrusage() and getpagesize() -- #ifdef doesn't work, Linux has
1469conflicting decls in its headers. Choice: only declare the return
1470type, not the argument prototype, and not on Linux.
1471
1472- importdl.c, configure*: set sharedlib extensions properly for NeXT
1473
1474- configure*, Makefile.in, Modules/Makefile.pre.in: AIX shared libraries
1475fixed; moved addition of PURIFY to LINKCC to configure
1476
1477- reopmodule.c, regexmodule.c, regexpr.c, zlibmodule.c: needed casts
1478added to shup up various compilers.
1479
1480- _tkinter.c: removed buggy mac #ifndef
1481
1482- Doc: various Mac documentation changes, added docs for 'ic' module
1483
1484- PC/make_nt.in: deleted
1485
1486- test_time.py, test_strftime.py: tweaks to catch %Z (which may return
1487"")
1488
1489- test_rotor.py: print b -> print `b`
1490
1491- Tkinter.py: (tagOrId) -> (tagOrId,)
1492
1493- Tkinter.py: the Tk class now also has a configure() method and
1494friends (they have been moved to the Misc class to accomplish this).
1495
1496- dict.get(key[, default]) returns dict[key] if it exists, or default
1497if it doesn't. The default defaults to None. This is quicker for
1498some applications than using either has_key() or try:...except
1499KeyError:....
1500
1501- Tools/webchecker/: some small changes to webchecker.py; added
1502websucker.py (a simple web site mirroring script).
1503
1504- Dictionary objects now have a get() method (also in UserDict.py).
1505dict.get(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists and default
1506otherwise; default defaults to None.
1507
1508- Tools/scripts/logmerge.py: print the author, too.
1509
1510- Changes to import: support for "import a.b.c" is now built in. See
1511http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/packages.html
1512for more info. Most important deviations from "ni.py": __init__.py is
1513executed in the package's namespace instead of as a submodule; and
1514there's no support for "__" or "__domain__". Note that "ni.py" is not
1515changed to match this -- it is simply declared obsolete (while at the
1516same time, it is documented...:-( ).
1517Unfortunately, "ihooks.py" has not been upgraded (but see "knee.py"
1518for an example implementation of hierarchical module import written in
1519Python).
1520
1521- More changes to import: the site.py module is now imported by
1522default when Python is initialized; use -S to disable it. The site.py
1523module extends the path with several more directories: site-packages
1524inside the lib/python1.5/ directory, site-python in the lib/
1525directory, and pathnames mentioned in *.pth files found in either of
1526those directories. See
1527http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/packages.html
1528for more info.
1529
1530- Changes to standard library subdirectory names: those subdirectories
1531that are not packages have been renamed with a hypen in their name,
1532e.g. lib-tk, lib-stdwin, plat-win, plat-linux2, plat-sunos5, dos-8x3.
1533The test suite is now a package -- to run a test, you must now use
1534"import test.test_foo".
1535
1536- A completely new re.py module is provided (thanks to Andrew
1537Kuchling, Tim Peters and Jeffrey Ollie) which uses Philip Hazel's
1538"pcre" re compiler and engine. For a while, the "old" re.py (which
1539was new in 1.5a3!) will be kept around as re1.py. The "old" regex
1540module and underlying parser and engine are still present -- while
1541regex is now officially obsolete, it will probably take several major
1542release cycles before it can be removed.
1543
1544- The posix module now has a strerror() function which translates an
1545error code to a string.
1546
1547- The emacs.py module (which was long obsolete) has been removed.
1548
1549- The universal makefile Misc/Makefile.pre.in now features an
1550"install" target. By default, installed shared libraries go into
1551$exec_prefix/lib/python$VERSION/site-packages/.
1552
1553- The install-sh script is installed with the other configuration
1554specific files (in the config/ subdirectory).
1555
1556- It turns out whatsound.py and sndhdr.py were identical modules.
1557Since there's also an imghdr.py file, I propose to make sndhdr.py the
1558official one. For compatibility, whatsound.py imports * from
1559sndhdr.py.
1560
1561- Class objects have a new attribute, __module__, giving the name of
1562the module in which they were declared. This is useful for pickle and
1563for printing the full name of a class exception.
1564
1565- Many extension modules no longer issue a fatal error when their
1566initialization fails; the importing code now checks whether an error
1567occurred during module initialization, and correctly propagates the
1568exception to the import statement.
1569
1570- Most extension modules now raise class-based exceptions (except when
1571-X is used).
1572
1573- Subtle changes to PyEval_{Save,Restore}Thread(): always swap the
1574thread state -- just don't manipulate the lock if it isn't there.
1575
1576- Fixed a bug in Python/getopt.c that made it do the wrong thing when
1577an option was a single '-'. Thanks to Andrew Kuchling.
1578
1579- New module mimetypes.py will guess a MIME type from a filename's
1580extension.
1581
1582- Windows: the DLL version is now settable via a resource rather than
1583being hardcoded. This can be used for "branding" a binary Python
1584distribution.
1585
1586- urllib.py is now threadsafe -- it now uses re instead of regex, and
1587sys.exc_info() instead of sys.exc_{type,value}.
1588
1589- Many other library modules that used to use
1590sys.exc_{type,value,traceback} are now more thread-safe by virtue of
1591using sys.exc_info().
1592
1593- The functions in popen2 have an optional buffer size parameter.
1594Also, the command argument can now be either a string (passed to the
1595shell) or a list of arguments (passed directly to execv).
1596
Guido van Rossumc45cf021998-04-10 20:06:21 +00001597- Alas, the thread support for _tkinter released with 1.5a3 didn't
1598work. It's been rewritten. The bad news is that it now requires a
1599modified version of a file in the standard Tcl distribution, which you
1600must compile with a -I option pointing to the standard Tcl source
1601tree. For this reason, the thread support is disabled by default.
1602
1603- The errno extension module adds two tables: errorcode maps errno
1604numbers to errno names (e.g. EINTR), and errorstr maps them to
1605message strings. (The latter is redundant because the new call
1606posix.strerror() now does the same, but alla...) (Marc-Andre Lemburg)
1607
1608- The readline extension module now provides some interfaces to
1609internal readline routines that make it possible to write a completer
1610in Python. An example completer, rlcompleter.py, is provided.
1611
1612 When completing a simple identifier, it completes keywords,
1613 built-ins and globals in __main__; when completing
1614 NAME.NAME..., it evaluates (!) the expression up to the last
1615 dot and completes its attributes.
1616
1617 It's very cool to do "import string" type "string.", hit the
1618 completion key (twice), and see the list of names defined by
1619 the string module!
1620
1621 Tip: to use the tab key as the completion key, call
1622
1623 readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")
1624
1625- The traceback.py module has a new function tb_lineno() by Marc-Andre
1626Lemburg which extracts the line number from the linenumber table in
1627the code object. Apparently the traceback object doesn't contains the
1628right linenumber when -O is used. Rather than guessing whether -O is
1629on or off, the module itself uses tb_lineno() unconditionally.
1630
1631- Fixed Demo/tkinter/matt/canvas-moving-or-creating.py: change bind()
1632to tag_bind() so it works again.
1633
1634- The pystone script is now a standard library module. Example use:
1635"import test.pystone; test.pystone.main()".
1636
1637- The import of the readline module in interactive mode is now also
1638attempted when -i is specified. (Yes, I know, giving in to Marc-Andre
1639Lemburg, who asked for this. :-)
1640
1641- rfc822.py: Entirely rewritten parseaddr() function by Sjoerd
1642Mullender, to be closer to the standard. This fixes the getaddr()
1643method. Unfortunately, getaddrlist() is as broken as ever, since it
1644splits on commas without regard for RFC 822 quoting conventions.
1645
1646- pprint.py: correctly emit trailing "," in singleton tuples.
1647
1648- _tkinter.c: export names for its type objects, TkappType and
1649TkttType.
1650
1651- pickle.py: use __module__ when defined; fix a particularly hard to
1652reproduce bug that confuses the memo when temporary objects are
1653returned by custom pickling interfaces; and a semantic change: when
1654unpickling the instance variables of an instance, use
1655inst.__dict__.update(value) instead of a for loop with setattr() over
1656the value.keys(). This is more consistent (the pickling doesn't use
1657getattr() either but pickles inst.__dict__) and avoids problems with
1658instances that have a __setattr__ hook. But it *is* a semantic change
1659(because the setattr hook is no longer used). So beware!
1660
1661- config.h is now installed (at last) in
1662$exec_prefix/include/python1.5/. For most sites, this means that it
1663is actually in $prefix/include/python1.5/, with all the other Python
1664include files, since $prefix and $exec_prefix are the same by
1665default.
1666
1667- The imp module now supports parts of the functionality to implement
1668import of hierarchical module names. It now supports find_module()
1669and load_module() for all types of modules. Docstrings have been
1670added for those functions in the built-in imp module that are still
1671relevant (some old interfaces are obsolete). For a sample
1672implementation of hierarchical module import in Python, see the new
1673library module knee.py.
1674
1675- The % operator on string objects now allows arbitrary nested parens
1676in a %(...)X style format. (Brad Howes)
1677
1678- Reverse the order in which Setup and Setup.local are passed to the
1679makesetup script. This allows variable definitions in Setup.local to
1680override definitions in Setup. (But you'll still have to edit Setup
1681if you want to disable modules that are enabled by default, or if such
1682modules need non-standard options.)
1683
1684- Added PyImport_ImportModuleEx(name, globals, locals, fromlist); this
1685is like PyImport_ImporModule(name) but receives the globals and locals
1686dict and the fromlist arguments as well. (The name is a char*; the
1687others are PyObject*s).
1688
1689- The 'p' format in the struct extension module alloded to above is
1690new in 1.5a4.
1691
1692- The types.py module now uses try-except in a few places to make it
1693more likely that it can be imported in restricted mode. Some type
1694names are undefined in that case, e.g. CodeType (inaccessible),
1695FileType (not always accessible), and TracebackType and FrameType
1696(inaccessible).
1697
1698- In urllib.py: added separate administration of temporary files
1699created y URLopener.retrieve() so cleanup() can properly remove them.
1700The old code removed everything in tempcache which was a bad idea if
1701the user had passed a non-temp file into it. Also, in basejoin(),
1702interpret relative paths starting in "../". This is necessary if the
1703server uses symbolic links.
1704
1705- The Windows build procedure and project files are now based on
1706Microsoft Visual C++ 5.x. The build now takes place in the PCbuild
1707directory. It is much more robust, and properly builds separate Debug
1708and Release versions. (The installer will be added shortly.)
1709
1710- Added casts and changed some return types in regexpr.c to avoid
1711compiler warnings or errors on some platforms.
1712
1713- The AIX build tools for shared libraries now supports VPATH. (Donn
1714Cave)
1715
1716- By default, disable the "portable" multimedia modules audioop,
1717imageop, and rgbimg, since they don't work on 64-bit platforms.
1718
1719- Fixed a nasty bug in cStringIO.c when code was actually using the
1720close() method (the destructors would try to free certain fields a
1721second time).
1722
1723- For those who think they need it, there's a "user.py" module. This
1724is *not* imported by default, but can be imported to run user-specific
1725setup commands, ~/.pythonrc.py.
1726
1727- Various speedups suggested by Fredrik Lundh, Marc-Andre Lemburg,
1728Vladimir Marangozov, and others.
1729
1730- Added os.altsep; this is '/' on DOS/Windows, and None on systems
1731with a sane filename syntax.
1732
1733- os.py: Write out the dynamic OS choice, to avoid exec statements.
1734Adding support for a new OS is now a bit more work, but I bet that
1735'dos' or 'nt' will cover most situations...
1736
1737- The obsolete exception AccessError is now really gone.
1738
1739- Tools/faqwiz/: New installation instructions show how to maintain
1740multiple FAQs. Removed bootstrap script from end of faqwiz.py module.
1741Added instructions to bootstrap script, too. Version bumped to 0.8.1.
1742Added <html>...</html> feature suggested by Skip Montanaro. Added
1743leading text for Roulette, default to 'Hit Reload ...'. Fix typo in
1744default SRCDIR.
1745
1746- Documentation for the relatively new modules "keyword" and "symbol"
1747has been added (to the end of the section on the parser extension
1748module).
1749
1750- In module bisect.py, but functions have two optional argument 'lo'
1751and 'hi' which allow you to specify a subsequence of the array to
1752operate on.
1753
1754- In ftplib.py, changed most methods to return their status (even when
1755it is always "200 OK") rather than swallowing it.
1756
1757- main() now calls setlocale(LC_ALL, ""), if setlocale() and
1758<locale.h> are defined.
1759
1760- Changes to configure.in, the configure script, and both
1761Makefile.pre.in files, to support SGI's SGI_ABI platform selection
1762environment variable.
1763
1764
1765======================================================================
1766
1767
Guido van Rossum7ea639b1997-11-26 16:36:28 +00001768From 1.4 to 1.5a3
1769=================
1770
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00001771Security
1772--------
1773
1774- If you are using the setuid script C wrapper (Misc/setuid-prog.c),
1775please use the new version. The old version has a huge security leak.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00001776
1777Miscellaneous
1778-------------
1779
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00001780- Because of various (small) incompatible changes in the Python
1781bytecode interpreter, the magic number for .pyc files has changed
1782again.
1783
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00001784- The default module search path is now much saner. Both on Unix and
1785Windows, it is essentially derived from the path to the executable
1786(which can be overridden by setting the environment variable
1787$PYTHONHOME). The value of $PYTHONPATH on Windows is now inserted in
1788front of the default path, like in Unix (instead of overriding the
1789default path). On Windows, the directory containing the executable is
1790added to the end of the path.
1791
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00001792- A new version of python-mode.el for Emacs has been included. Also,
1793a new file ccpy-style.el has been added to configure Emacs cc-mode for
1794the preferred style in Python C sources.
1795
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00001796- On Unix, when using sys.argv[0] to insert the script directory in
1797front of sys.path, expand a symbolic link. You can now install a
1798program in a private directory and have a symbolic link to it in a
1799public bin directory, and it will put the private directory in the
1800module search path. Note that the symlink is expanded in sys.path[0]
1801but not in sys.argv[0], so you can still tell the name by which you
1802were invoked.
1803
1804- It is now recommended to use ``#!/usr/bin/env python'' instead of
1805``#!/usr/local/bin/python'' at the start of executable scripts, except
1806for CGI scripts. It has been determined that the use of /usr/bin/env
1807is more portable than that of /usr/local/bin/python -- scripts almost
1808never have to be edited when the Python interpreter lives in a
1809non-standard place. Note that this doesn't work for CGI scripts since
1810the python executable often doesn't live in the HTTP server's default
1811search path.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00001812
1813- The silly -s command line option and the corresponding
1814PYTHONSUPPRESS environment variable (and the Py_SuppressPrint global
1815flag in the Python/C API) are gone.
1816
1817- Most problems on 64-bit platforms should now be fixed. Andrew
1818Kuchling helped. Some uncommon extension modules are still not
1819clean (image and audio ops?).
1820
1821- Fixed a bug where multiple anonymous tuple arguments would be mixed up
1822when using the debugger or profiler (reported by Just van Rossum).
1823The simplest example is ``def f((a,b),(c,d)): print a,b,c,d''; this
1824would print the wrong value when run under the debugger or profiler.
1825
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00001826- The hacks that the dictionary implementation used to speed up
1827repeated lookups of the same C string were removed; these were a
1828source of subtle problems and don't seem to serve much of a purpose
1829any longer.
1830
1831- All traces of support for the long dead access statement have been
1832removed from the sources.
1833
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00001834- Plugged the two-byte memory leak in the tokenizer when reading an
1835interactive EOF.
1836
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00001837- There's a -O option to the interpreter that removes SET_LINENO
1838instructions and assert statements (see below); it uses and produces
1839.pyo files instead of .pyc files. The speedup is only a few percent
1840in most cases. The line numbers are still available in the .pyo file,
1841as a separate table (which is also available in .pyc files). However,
1842the removal of the SET_LINENO instructions means that the debugger
1843(pdb) can't set breakpoints on lines in -O mode. The traceback module
1844contains a function to extract a line number from the code object
1845referenced in a traceback object. In the future it should be possible
1846to write external bytecode optimizers that create better optimized
1847.pyo files, and there should be more control over optimization;
1848consider the -O option a "teaser". Without -O, the assert statement
1849actually generates code that first checks __debug__; if this variable
1850is false, the assertion is not checked. __debug__ is a built-in
1851variable whose value is initialized to track the -O flag (it's true
1852iff -O is not specified). With -O, no code is generated for assert
1853statements, nor for code of the form ``if __debug__: <something>''.
1854Sorry, no further constant folding happens.
1855
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00001856
1857Performance
1858-----------
1859
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00001860- It's much faster (almost twice for pystone.py -- see
1861Tools/scripts). See the entry on string interning below.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00001862
1863- Some speedup by using separate free lists for method objects (both
1864the C and the Python variety) and for floating point numbers.
1865
1866- Big speedup by allocating frame objects with a single malloc() call.
1867The Python/C API for frames is changed (you shouldn't be using this
1868anyway).
1869
1870- Significant speedup by inlining some common opcodes for common operand
1871types (e.g. i+i, i-i, and list[i]). Fredrik Lundh.
1872
1873- Small speedup by reordering the method tables of some common
1874objects (e.g. list.append is now first).
1875
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00001876- Big optimization to the read() method of file objects. A read()
1877without arguments now attempts to use fstat to allocate a buffer of
1878the right size; for pipes and sockets, it will fall back to doubling
1879the buffer size. While that the improvement is real on all systems,
1880it is most dramatic on Windows.
1881
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00001882
1883Documentation
1884-------------
1885
1886- Many new pieces of library documentation were contributed, mostly by
1887Andrew Kuchling. Even cmath is now documented! There's also a
1888chapter of the library manual, "libundoc.tex", which provides a
1889listing of all undocumented modules, plus their status (e.g. internal,
1890obsolete, or in need of documentation). Also contributions by Sue
1891Williams, Skip Montanaro, and some module authors who succumbed to
1892pressure to document their own contributed modules :-). Note that
1893printing the documentation now kills fewer trees -- the margins have
1894been reduced.
1895
1896- I have started documenting the Python/C API. Unfortunately this project
1897hasn't been completed yet. It will be complete before the final release of
1898Python 1.5, though. At the moment, it's better to read the LaTeX source
1899than to attempt to run it through LaTeX and print the resulting dvi file.
1900
1901- The posix module (and hence os.py) now has doc strings! Thanks to Neil
1902Schemenauer. I received a few other contributions of doc strings. In most
1903other places, doc strings are still wishful thinking...
1904
1905
1906Language changes
1907----------------
1908
1909- Private variables with leading double underscore are now a permanent
1910feature of the language. (These were experimental in release 1.4. I have
1911favorable experience using them; I can't label them "experimental"
1912forever.)
1913
1914- There's new string literal syntax for "raw strings". Prefixing a string
1915literal with the letter r (or R) disables all escape processing in the
1916string; for example, r'\n' is a two-character string consisting of a
1917backslash followed by the letter n. This combines with all forms of string
1918quotes; it is actually useful for triple quoted doc strings which might
1919contain references to \n or \t. An embedded quote prefixed with a
1920backslash does not terminate the string, but the backslash is still
1921included in the string; for example, r'\'' is a two-character string
1922consisting of a backslash and a quote. (Raw strings are also
1923affectionately known as Robin strings, after their inventor, Robin
1924Friedrich.)
1925
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00001926- There's a simple assert statement, and a new exception
1927AssertionError. For example, ``assert foo > 0'' is equivalent to ``if
1928not foo > 0: raise AssertionError''. Sorry, the text of the asserted
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00001929condition is not available; it would be too complicated to generate
1930code for this (since the code is generated from a parse tree).
1931However, the text is displayed as part of the traceback!
1932
1933- The raise statement has a new feature: when using "raise SomeClass,
1934somevalue" where somevalue is not an instance of SomeClass, it
1935instantiates SomeClass(somevalue). In 1.5a4, if somevalue is an
1936instance of a *derived* class of SomeClass, the exception class raised
1937is set to somevalue.__class__, and SomeClass is ignored after that.
1938
1939- Duplicate keyword arguments are now detected at compile time;
1940f(a=1,a=2) is now a syntax error.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00001941
1942
1943Changes to builtin features
Guido van Rossumf0b69f01997-08-15 02:50:47 +00001944---------------------------
1945
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00001946- There's a new exception FloatingPointError (used only by Lee Busby's
1947patches to catch floating point exceptions, at the moment).
1948
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00001949- The obsolete exception ConflictError (presumably used by the long
1950obsolete access statement) has been deleted.
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00001951
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00001952- There's a new function sys.exc_info() which returns the tuple
1953(sys.exc_type, sys.exc_value, sys.exc_traceback) in a thread-safe way.
Guido van Rossumf0b69f01997-08-15 02:50:47 +00001954
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00001955- There's a new variable sys.executable, pointing to the executable file
1956for the Python interpreter.
Guido van Rossumf0b69f01997-08-15 02:50:47 +00001957
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00001958- The sort() methods for lists no longer uses the C library qsort(); I
1959wrote my own quicksort implementation, with lots of help (in the form
1960of a kind of competition) from Tim Peters. This solves a bug in
1961dictionary comparisons on some Solaris versions when Python is built
1962with threads, and makes sorting lists even faster.
1963
1964- The semantics of comparing two dictionaries have changed, to make
1965comparison of unequal dictionaries faster. A shorter dictionary is
1966always considered smaller than a larger dictionary. For dictionaries
1967of the same size, the smallest differing element determines the
1968outcome (which yields the same results as before in this case, without
1969explicit sorting). Thanks to Aaron Watters for suggesting something
1970like this.
1971
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00001972- The semantics of try-except have changed subtly so that calling a
1973function in an exception handler that itself raises and catches an
1974exception no longer overwrites the sys.exc_* variables. This also
1975alleviates the problem that objects referenced in a stack frame that
1976caught an exception are kept alive until another exception is caught
1977-- the sys.exc_* variables are restored to their previous value when
1978returning from a function that caught an exception.
Guido van Rossumf0b69f01997-08-15 02:50:47 +00001979
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00001980- There's a new "buffer" interface. Certain objects (e.g. strings and
1981arrays) now support the "buffer" protocol. Buffer objects are acceptable
1982whenever formerly a string was required for a write operation; mutable
1983buffer objects can be the target of a read operation using the call
1984f.readinto(buffer). A cool feature is that regular expression matching now
1985also work on array objects. Contribution by Jack Jansen. (Needs
1986documentation.)
1987
1988- String interning: dictionary lookups are faster when the lookup
1989string object is the same object as the key in the dictionary, not
1990just a string with the same value. This is done by having a pool of
1991"interned" strings. Most names generated by the interpreter are now
1992automatically interned, and there's a new built-in function intern(s)
1993that returns the interned version of a string. Interned strings are
1994not a different object type, and interning is totally optional, but by
1995interning most keys a speedup of about 15% was obtained for the
1996pystone benchmark.
1997
1998- Dictionary objects have several new methods; clear() and copy() have
1999the obvious semantics, while update(d) merges the contents of another
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002000dictionary d into this one, overriding existing keys. The dictionary
2001implementation file is now called dictobject.c rather than the
2002confusing mappingobject.c.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002003
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002004- The intrinsic function dir() is much smarter; it looks in __dict__,
2005__members__ and __methods__.
2006
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002007- The intrinsic functions int(), long() and float() can now take a
2008string argument and then do the same thing as string.atoi(),
2009string.atol(), and string.atof(). No second 'base' argument is
2010allowed, and complex() does not take a string (nobody cared enough).
2011
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002012- When a module is deleted, its globals are now deleted in two phases.
2013In the first phase, all variables whose name begins with exactly one
2014underscore are replaced by None; in the second phase, all variables
2015are deleted. This makes it possible to have global objects whose
2016destructors depend on other globals. The deletion order within each
2017phase is still random.
2018
2019- It is no longer an error for a function to be called without a
2020global variable __builtins__ -- an empty directory will be provided
2021by default.
2022
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002023- Guido's corollary to the "Don Beaudry hook": it is now possible to
2024do metaprogramming by using an instance as a base class. Not for the
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002025faint of heart; and undocumented as yet, but basically if a base class
2026is an instance, its class will be instantiated to create the new
2027class. Jim Fulton will love it -- it also works with instances of his
2028"extension classes", since it is triggered by the presence of a
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002029__class__ attribute on the purported base class. See
2030Demo/metaclasses/index.html for an explanation and see that directory
2031for examples.
2032
2033- Another change is that the Don Beaudry hook is now invoked when
2034*any* base class is special. (Up to 1.5a3, the *last* special base
2035class is used; in 1.5a4, the more rational choice of the *first*
2036special base class is used.)
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002037
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002038- New optional parameter to the readlines() method of file objects.
2039This indicates the number of bytes to read (the actual number of bytes
2040read will be somewhat larger due to buffering reading until the end of
2041the line). Some optimizations have also been made to speed it up (but
2042not as much as read()).
2043
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002044- Complex numbers no longer have the ".conj" pseudo attribute; use
2045z.conjugate() instead, or complex(z.real, -z.imag). Complex numbers
2046now *do* support the __members__ and __methods__ special attributes.
2047
2048- The complex() function now looks for a __complex__() method on class
2049instances before giving up.
2050
2051- Long integers now support arbitrary shift counts, so you can now
2052write 1L<<1000000, memory permitting. (Python 1.4 reports "outrageous
2053shift count for this.)
2054
2055- The hex() and oct() functions have been changed so that for regular
2056integers, they never emit a minus sign. For example, on a 32-bit
2057machine, oct(-1) now returns '037777777777' and hex(-1) returns
2058'0xffffffff'. While this may seem inconsistent, it is much more
2059useful. (For long integers, a minus sign is used as before, to fit
2060the result in memory :-)
2061
2062- The hash() function computes better hashes for several data types,
2063including strings, floating point numbers, and complex numbers.
2064
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002065
2066New extension modules
2067---------------------
2068
2069- New extension modules cStringIO.c and cPickle.c, written by Jim
2070Fulton and other folks at Digital Creations. These are much more
2071efficient than their Python counterparts StringIO.py and pickle.py,
2072but don't support subclassing. cPickle.c clocks up to 1000 times
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002073faster than pickle.py; cStringIO.c's improvement is less dramatic but
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002074still significant.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002075
2076- New extension module zlibmodule.c, interfacing to the free zlib
2077library (gzip compatible compression). There's also a module gzip.py
2078which provides a higher level interface. Written by Andrew Kuchling
2079and Jeremy Hylton.
2080
2081- New module readline; see the "miscellaneous" section above.
2082
2083- New Unix extension module resource.c, by Jeremy Hylton, provides
2084access to getrlimit(), getrusage(), setrusage(), getpagesize(), and
2085related symbolic constants.
2086
2087- New extension puremodule.c, by Barry Warsaw, which interfaces to the
2088Purify(TM) C API. See also the file Misc/PURIFY.README. It is also
2089possible to enable Purify by simply setting the PURIFY Makefile
2090variable in the Modules/Setup file.
2091
2092
2093Changes in extension modules
2094----------------------------
2095
2096- The struct extension module has several new features to control byte
2097order and word size. It supports reading and writing IEEE floats even
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002098on platforms where this is not the native format. It uses uppercase
2099format codes for unsigned integers of various sizes (always using
2100Python long ints for 'I' and 'L'), 's' with a size prefix for strings,
2101and 'p' for "Pascal strings" (with a leading length byte, included in
Guido van Rossum92664b81997-10-07 00:12:43 +00002102the size; blame Hannu Krosing; new in 1.5a4). A prefix '>' forces
2103big-endian data and '<' forces little-endian data; these also select
2104standard data sizes and disable automatic alignment (use pad bytes as
2105needed).
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002106
2107- The array module supports uppercase format codes for unsigned data
2108formats (like the struct module).
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002109
2110- The fcntl extension module now exports the needed symbolic
2111constants. (Formerly these were in FCNTL.py which was not available
2112or correct for all platforms.)
2113
2114- The extension modules dbm, gdbm and bsddb now check that the
2115database is still open before making any new calls.
2116
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002117- The dbhash module is no more. Use bsddb instead. (There's a third
2118party interface for the BSD 2.x code somewhere on the web; support for
2119bsddb will be deprecated.)
2120
2121- The gdbm module now supports a sync() method.
2122
2123- The socket module now has some new functions: getprotobyname(), and
2124the set {ntoh,hton}{s,l}().
2125
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002126- Various modules now export their type object: socket.SocketType,
2127array.ArrayType.
2128
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002129- The socket module's accept() method now returns unknown addresses as
2130a tuple rather than raising an exception. (This can happen in
2131promiscuous mode.) Theres' also a new function getprotobyname().
2132
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002133- The pthread support for the thread module now works on most platforms.
2134
2135- STDWIN is now officially obsolete. Support for it will eventually
2136be removed from the distribution.
2137
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002138- The binascii extension module is now hopefully fully debugged.
2139(XXX Oops -- Fredrik Lundh promised me a uuencode fix that I never
2140received.)
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002141
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002142- audioop.c: added a ratecv() function; better handling of overflow in
2143add().
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002144
2145- posixmodule.c: now exports the O_* flags (O_APPEND etc.). On
2146Windows, also O_TEXT and O_BINARY. The 'error' variable (the
2147exception is raises) is renamed -- its string value is now "os.error",
2148so newbies don't believe they have to import posix (or nt) to catch
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002149it when they see os.error reported as posix.error. The execve()
2150function now accepts any mapping object for the environment.
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002151
2152- A new version of the al (audio library) module for SGI was
2153contributed by Sjoerd Mullender.
2154
2155- The regex module has a new function get_syntax() which retrieves the
2156syntax setting set by set_syntax(). The code was also sanitized,
2157removing worries about unclean error handling. See also below for its
2158successor, re.py.
2159
2160- The "new" module (which creates new objects of various types) once
2161again has a fully functioning new.function() method. Dangerous as
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002162ever! Also, new.code() has several new arguments.
2163
2164- A problem has been fixed in the rotor module: on systems with signed
2165characters, rotor-encoded data was not portable when the key contained
21668-bit characters. Also, setkey() now requires its argument rather
2167than having broken code to default it.
2168
2169- The sys.builtin_module_names variable is now a tuple. Another new
2170variables in sys is sys.executable (the full path to the Python
2171binary, if known).
2172
2173- The specs for time.strftime() have undergone some revisions. It
2174appears that not all format characters are supported in the same way
2175on all platforms. Rather than reimplement it, we note these
2176differences in the documentation, and emphasize the shared set of
2177features. There's also a thorough test set (that occasionally finds
2178problems in the C library implementation, e.g. on some Linuxes),
2179thanks to Skip Montanaro.
2180
2181- The nis module seems broken when used with NIS+; unfortunately
2182nobody knows how to fix it. It should still work with old NIS.
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002183
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002184
2185New library modules
2186-------------------
2187
2188- New (still experimental) Perl-style regular expression module,
2189re.py, which uses a new interface for matching as well as a new
2190syntax; the new interface avoids the thread-unsafety of the regex
2191interface. This comes with a helper extension reopmodule.c and vastly
2192rewritten regexpr.c. Most work on this was done by Jeffrey Ollie, Tim
2193Peters, and Andrew Kuchling. See the documentation libre.tex. In
21941.5, the old regex module is still fully supported; in the future, it
2195will become obsolete.
2196
2197- New module gzip.py; see zlib above.
2198
2199- New module keyword.py exports knowledge about Python's built-in
2200keywords. (New version by Ka-Ping Yee.)
2201
2202- New module pprint.py (with documentation) which supports
2203pretty-printing of lists, tuples, & dictionaries recursively. By Fred
2204Drake.
2205
2206- New module code.py. The function code.compile_command() can
2207determine whether an interactively entered command is complete or not,
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002208distinguishing incomplete from invalid input. (XXX Unfortunately,
2209this seems broken at this moment, and I don't have the time to fix
2210it. It's probably better to add an explicit interface to the parser
2211for this.)
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002212
Guido van Rossum522578e1997-08-28 03:43:21 +00002213- There is now a library module xdrlib.py which can read and write the
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002214XDR data format as used by Sun RPC, for example. It uses the struct
2215module.
2216
2217
2218Changes in library modules
2219--------------------------
2220
2221- Module codehack.py is now completely obsolete.
2222
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002223- The pickle.py module has been updated to make it compatible with the
2224new binary format that cPickle.c produces. By default it produces the
2225old all-ASCII format compatible with the old pickle.py, still much
2226faster than pickle.py; it will read both formats automatically. A few
2227other updates have been made.
2228
2229- A new helper module, copy_reg.py, is provided to register extensions
2230to the pickling code.
2231
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002232- Revamped module tokenize.py is much more accurate and has an
2233interface that makes it a breeze to write code to colorize Python
2234source code. Contributed by Ka-Ping Yee.
2235
2236- In ihooks.py, ModuleLoader.load_module() now closes the file under
2237all circumstances.
2238
2239- The tempfile.py module has a new class, TemporaryFile, which creates
2240an open temporary file that will be deleted automatically when
2241closed. This works on Windows and MacOS as well as on Unix. (Jim
2242Fulton.)
2243
2244- Changes to the cgi.py module: Most imports are now done at the
2245top of the module, which provides a speedup when using ni (Jim
2246Fulton). The problem with file upload to a Windows platform is solved
2247by using the new tempfile.TemporaryFile class; temporary files are now
2248always opened in binary mode (Jim Fulton). The cgi.escape() function
2249now takes an optional flag argument that quotes '"' to '&quot;'. It
2250is now possible to invoke cgi.py from a command line script, to test
2251cgi scripts more easily outside an http server. There's an optional
2252limit to the size of uploads to POST (Skip Montanaro). Added a
2253'strict_parsing' option to all parsing functions (Jim Fulton). The
2254function parse_qs() now uses urllib.unquote() on the name as well as
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002255the value of fields (Clarence Gardner). The FieldStorage class now
2256has a __len__() method.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002257
2258- httplib.py: the socket object is no longer closed; all HTTP/1.*
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002259responses are now accepted; and it is now thread-safe (by not using
2260the regex module).
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002261
2262- BaseHTTPModule.py: treat all HTTP/1.* versions the same.
2263
2264- The popen2.py module is now rewritten using a class, which makes
2265access to the standard error stream and the process id of the
2266subprocess possible.
2267
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002268- Added timezone support to the rfc822.py module, in the form of a
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002269getdate_tz() method and a parsedate_tz() function; also a mktime_tz().
2270Also added recognition of some non-standard date formats, by Lars
2271Wirzenius, and RFC 850 dates (Chris Lawrence).
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002272
2273- mhlib.py: various enhancements, including almost compatible parsing
2274of message sequence specifiers without invoking a subprocess. Also
2275added a createmessage() method by Lars Wirzenius.
2276
2277- The StringIO.StringIO class now supports readline(nbytes). (Lars
2278Wirzenius.) (Of course, you should be using cStringIO for performance.)
2279
2280- UserDict.py supports the new dictionary methods as well.
2281
2282- Improvements for whrandom.py by Tim Peters: use 32-bit arithmetic to
2283speed it up, and replace 0 seed values by 1 to avoid degeneration.
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002284A bug was fixed in the test for invalid arguments.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002285
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002286- Module ftplib.py: added support for parsing a .netrc file (Fred
2287Drake). Also added an ntransfercmd() method to the FTP class, which
2288allows access to the expected size of a transfer when available, and a
2289parse150() function to the module which parses the corresponding 150
2290response.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002291
2292- urllib.py: the ftp cache is now limited to 10 entries. Added
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002293quote_plus() and unquote_plus() functions which are like quote() and
2294unquote() but also replace spaces with '+' or vice versa, for
2295encoding/decoding CGI form arguments. Catch all errors from the ftp
2296module. HTTP requests now add the Host: header line. The proxy
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002297variable names are now mapped to lower case, for Windows. The
2298spliturl() function no longer erroneously throws away all data past
2299the first newline. The basejoin() function now intereprets "../"
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002300correctly. I *believe* that the problems with "exception raised in
2301__del__" under certain circumstances have been fixed (mostly by
2302changes elsewher in the interpreter).
2303
2304- In urlparse.py, there is a cache for results in urlparse.urlparse();
2305its size limit is set to 20. Also, new URL schemes shttp, https, and
2306snews are "supported".
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002307
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002308- shelve.py: use cPickle and cStringIO when available. Also added
2309a sync() method, which calls the database's sync() method if there is
2310one.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002311
2312- The mimetools.py module now uses the available Python modules for
2313decoding quoted-printable, uuencode and base64 formats, rather than
2314creating a subprocess.
2315
2316- The python debugger (pdb.py, and its base class bdb.py) now support
2317conditional breakpoints. See the docs.
2318
2319- The modules base64.py, uu.py and quopri.py can now be used as simple
2320command line utilities.
2321
2322- Various small fixes to the nntplib.py module that I can't bother to
2323document in detail.
2324
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002325- Sjoerd Mullender's mimify.py module now supports base64 encoding and
2326includes functions to handle the funny encoding you sometimes see in mail
2327headers. It is now documented.
2328
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002329- mailbox.py: Added BabylMailbox. Improved the way the mailbox is
2330gotten from the environment.
2331
2332- Many more modules now correctly open files in binary mode when this
2333is necessary on non-Unix platforms.
2334
2335- The copying functions in the undocumented module shutil.py are
2336smarter.
2337
2338- The Writer classes in the formatter.py module now have a flush()
2339method.
2340
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002341- The sgmllib.py module accepts hyphens and periods in the middle of
2342attribute names. While this is against the SGML standard, there is
2343some HTML out there that uses this...
2344
2345- The interface for the Python bytecode disassembler module, dis.py,
2346has been enhanced quite a bit. There's now one main function,
2347dis.dis(), which takes almost any kind of object (function, module,
2348class, instance, method, code object) and disassembles it; without
2349arguments it disassembles the last frame of the last traceback. The
2350other functions have changed slightly, too.
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002351
2352- The imghdr.py module recognizes new image types: BMP, PNG.
2353
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002354- The string.py module has a new function replace(str, old, new,
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002355[maxsplit]) which does substring replacements. It is actually
2356implemented in C in the strop module. The functions [r]find() an
2357[r]index() have an optional 4th argument indicating the end of the
2358substring to search, alsoo implemented by their strop counterparts.
2359(Remember, never import strop -- import string uses strop when
2360available with zero overhead.)
2361
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002362- The string.join() function now accepts any sequence argument, not
2363just lists and tuples.
2364
2365- The string.maketrans() requires its first two arguments to be
2366present. The old version didn't require them, but there's not much
2367point without them, and the documentation suggests that they are
2368required, so we fixed the code to match the documentation.
2369
2370- The regsub.py module has a function clear_cache(), which clears its
2371internal cache of compiled regular expressions. Also, the cache now
2372takes the current syntax setting into account. (However, this module
2373is now obsolete -- use the sub() or subn() functions or methods in the
2374re module.)
2375
2376- The undocumented module Complex.py has been removed, now that Python
2377has built-in complex numbers. A similar module remains as
2378Demo/classes/Complex.py, as an example.
2379
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002380
2381Changes to the build process
2382----------------------------
2383
2384- The way GNU readline is configured is totally different. The
2385--with-readline configure option is gone. It is now an extension
2386module, which may be loaded dynamically. You must enable it (and
2387specify the correct linraries to link with) in the Modules/Setup file.
2388Importing the module installs some hooks which enable command line
2389editing. When the interpreter shell is invoked interactively, it
2390attempts to import the readline module; when this fails, the default
2391input mechanism is used. The hook variables are PyOS_InputHook and
2392PyOS_ReadlineFunctionPointer. (Code contributed by Lee Busby, with
2393ideas from William Magro.)
2394
2395- New build procedure: a single library, libpython1.5.a, is now built,
2396which contains absolutely everything except for a one-line main()
2397program (which calls Py_Main(argc, argv) to start the interpreter
2398shell). This makes life much simpler for applications that need to
2399embed Python. The serial number of the build is now included in the
2400version string (sys.version).
2401
2402- As far as I can tell, neither gcc -Wall nor the Microsoft compiler
2403emits a single warning any more when compiling Python.
2404
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002405- A number of new Makefile variables have been added for special
2406situations, e.g. LDLAST is appended to the link command. These are
2407used by editing the Makefile or passing them on the make command
2408line.
2409
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002410- A set of patches from Lee Busby has been integrated that make it
2411possible to catch floating point exceptions. Use the configure option
2412--with-fpectl to enable the patches; the extension modules fpectl and
2413fpetest provide control to enable/disable and test the feature,
2414respectively.
2415
2416- The support for shared libraries under AIX is now simpler and more
2417robust. Thanks to Vladimir Marangozov for revamping his own patches!
2418
2419- The Modules/makesetup script now reads a file Setup.local as well as
2420a file Setup. Most changes to the Setup script can be done by editing
2421Setup.local instead, which makes it easier to carry a particular setup
2422over from one release to the next.
2423
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002424- The Modules/makesetup script now copies any "include" lines it
2425encounters verbatim into the output Makefile. It also recognizes .cxx
2426and .cpp as C++ source files.
2427
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002428- The configure script is smarter about C compiler options; e.g. with
2429gcc it uses -O2 and -g when possible, and on some other platforms it
2430uses -Olimit 1500 to avoid a warning from the optimizer about the main
2431loop in ceval.c (which has more than 1000 basic blocks).
2432
2433- The configure script now detects whether malloc(0) returns a NULL
2434pointer or a valid block (of length zero). This avoids the nonsense
2435of always adding one byte to all malloc() arguments on most platforms.
2436
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002437- The configure script has a new option, --with-dec-threads, to enable
2438DEC threads on DEC Alpha platforms. Also, --with-threads is now an
2439alias for --with-thread (this was the Most Common Typo in configure
2440arguments).
2441
2442- Many changes in Doc/Makefile; amongst others, latex2html is now used
2443to generate HTML from all latex documents.
2444
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002445
2446Change to the Python/C API
2447--------------------------
2448
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002449- Because some interfaces have changed, the PYTHON_API macro has been
2450bumped. Most extensions built for the old API version will still run,
2451but I can't guarantee this. Python prints a warning message on
2452version mismatches; it dumps core when the version mismatch causes a
2453serious problem :-)
2454
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002455- I've completed the Grand Renaming, with the help of Roger Masse and
2456Barry Warsaw. This makes reading or debugging the code much easier.
2457Many other unrelated code reorganizations have also been carried out.
2458The allobjects.h header file is gone; instead, you would have to
2459include Python.h followed by rename2.h. But you're better off running
2460Tools/scripts/fixcid.py -s Misc/RENAME on your source, so you can omit
2461the rename2.h; it will disappear in the next release.
2462
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002463- Various and sundry small bugs in the "abstract" interfaces have been
2464fixed. Thanks to all the (involuntary) testers of the Python 1.4
2465version! Some new functions have been added, e.g. PySequence_List(o),
2466equivalent to list(o) in Python.
2467
2468- New API functions PyLong_FromUnsignedLong() and
2469PyLong_AsUnsignedLong().
2470
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002471- The API functions in the file cgensupport.c are no longer
2472supported. This file has been moved to Modules and is only ever
2473compiled when the SGI specific 'gl' module is built.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002474
2475- PyObject_Compare() can now raise an exception. Check with
2476PyErr_Occurred(). The comparison function in an object type may also
2477raise an exception.
2478
2479- The slice interface uses an upper bound of INT_MAX when no explicit
2480upper bound is given (e.x. for a[1:]). It used to ask the object for
2481its length and do the calculations.
2482
2483- Support for multiple independent interpreters. See Doc/api.tex,
2484functions Py_NewInterpreter() and Py_EndInterpreter(). Since the
2485documentation is incomplete, also see the new Demo/pysvr example
2486(which shows how to use these in a threaded application) and the
2487source code.
2488
2489- There is now a Py_Finalize() function which "de-initializes"
2490Python. It is possible to completely restart the interpreter
2491repeatedly by calling Py_Finalize() followed by Py_Initialize(). A
2492change of functionality in Py_Initialize() means that it is now a
2493fatal error to call it while the interpreter is already initialized.
2494The old, half-hearted Py_Cleanup() routine is gone. Use of Py_Exit()
2495is deprecated (it is nothing more than Py_Finalize() followed by
2496exit()).
2497
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002498- There are no known memory leaks left. While Py_Finalize() doesn't
2499free *all* allocated memory (some of it is hard to track down),
2500repeated calls to Py_Finalize() and Py_Initialize() do not create
2501unaccessible heap blocks.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002502
2503- There is now explicit per-thread state. (Inspired by, but not the
2504same as, Greg Stein's free threading patches.)
2505
2506- There is now better support for threading C applications. There are
2507now explicit APIs to manipulate the interpreter lock. Read the source
2508or the Demo/pysvr example; the new functions are
2509PyEval_{Acquire,Release}{Lock,Thread}().
2510
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002511- The test macro DEBUG has changed to Py_DEBUG, to avoid interference
2512with other libraries' DEBUG macros. Likewise for any other test
2513macros that didn't yet start with Py_.
2514
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002515- New wrappers around malloc() and friends: Py_Malloc() etc. call
2516malloc() and call PyErr_NoMemory() when it fails; PyMem_Malloc() call
2517just malloc(). Use of these wrappers could be essential if multiple
2518memory allocators exist (e.g. when using certain DLL setups under
2519Windows). (Idea by Jim Fulton.)
2520
2521- New C API PyImport_Import() which uses whatever __import__() hook
2522that is installed for the current execution environment. By Jim
2523Fulton.
2524
2525- It is now possible for an extension module's init function to fail
2526non-fatally, by calling one of the PyErr_* functions and returning.
2527
2528- The PyInt_AS_LONG() and PyFloat_AS_DOUBLE() macros now cast their
2529argument to the proper type, like the similar PyString macros already
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002530did. (Suggestion by Marc-Andre Lemburg.) Similar for PyList_GET_SIZE
2531and PyList_GET_ITEM.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002532
2533- Some of the Py_Get* function, like Py_GetVersion() (but not yet
2534Py_GetPath()) are now declared as returning a const char *. (More
2535should follow.)
2536
2537- Changed the run-time library to check for exceptions after object
2538comparisons. PyObject_Compare() can now return an exception; use
2539PyErr_Occurred() to check (there is *no* special return value).
2540
2541- PyFile_WriteString() and Py_Flushline() now return error indicators
2542instead of clearing exceptions. This fixes an obscure bug where using
2543these would clear a pending exception, discovered by Just van Rossum.
2544
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002545- There's a new function, PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords(), which parses
2546an argument list including keyword arguments. Contributed by Geoff
2547Philbrick.
2548
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002549- PyArg_GetInt() is gone.
2550
2551- It's no longer necessary to include graminit.h when calling one of
2552the extended parser API functions. The three public grammar start
2553symbols are now in Python.h as Py_single_input, Py_file_input, and
2554Py_eval_input.
2555
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002556- The CObject interface has a new function,
2557PyCObject_Import(module, name). It calls PyCObject_AsVoidPtr()
2558on the object referenced by "module.name".
2559
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002560
2561Tkinter
2562-------
2563
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002564- On popular demand, _tkinter once again installs a hook for readline
2565that processes certain Tk events while waiting for the user to type
2566(using PyOS_InputHook).
2567
2568- A patch by Craig McPheeters plugs the most obnoxious memory leaks,
2569caused by command definitions referencing widget objects beyond their
2570lifetime.
2571
2572- New standard dialog modules: tkColorChooser.py, tkCommonDialog.py,
2573tkMessageBox.py, tkFileDialog.py, tkSimpleDialog.py These interface
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002574with the new Tk dialog scripts, and provide more "native platform"
2575style file selection dialog boxes on some platforms. Contributed by
2576Fredrik Lundh.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002577
2578- Tkinter.py: when the first Tk object is destroyed, it sets the
2579hiddel global _default_root to None, so that when another Tk object is
2580created it becomes the new default root. Other miscellaneous
2581changes and fixes.
2582
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002583- The Image class now has a configure method.
2584
2585- Added a bunch of new winfo options to Tkinter.py; we should now be
2586up to date with Tk 4.2. The new winfo options supported are:
2587mananger, pointerx, pointerxy, pointery, server, viewable, visualid,
2588visualsavailable.
2589
2590- The broken bind() method on Canvas objects defined in the Canvas.py
2591module has been fixed. The CanvasItem and Group classes now also have
2592an unbind() method.
2593
2594- The problem with Tkinter.py falling back to trying to import
2595"tkinter" when "_tkinter" is not found has been fixed -- it no longer
2596tries "tkinter", ever. This makes diagnosing the problem "_tkinter
2597not configured" much easier and will hopefully reduce the newsgroup
2598traffic on this topic.
2599
2600- The ScrolledText module once again supports the 'cnf' parameter, to
2601be compatible with the examples in Mark Lutz' book (I know, I know,
2602too late...)
2603
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002604- The _tkinter.c extension module has been revamped. It now support
2605Tk versions 4.1 through 8.0; support for 4.0 has been dropped. It
2606works well under Windows and Mac (with the latest Tk ports to those
2607platforms). It also supports threading -- it is safe for one
2608(Python-created) thread to be blocked in _tkinter.mainloop() while
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002609other threads modify widgets. To make the changes visible, those
2610threads must use update_idletasks()method. (The patch for threading
2611in 1.5a3 was broken; in 1.5a4, it is back in a different version,
2612which requires access to the Tcl sources to get it to work -- hence it
2613is disabled by default.)
2614
2615- A bug in _tkinter.c has been fixed, where Split() with a string
2616containing an unmatched '"' could cause an exception or core dump.
2617
2618- Unfortunately, on Windows and Mac, Tk 8.0 no longer supports
2619CreateFileHandler, so _tkinter.createfilehandler is not available on
2620those platforms when using Tk 8.0 or later. I will have to rethink
2621how to interface with Tcl's lower-level event mechanism, or with its
2622channels (which are like Python's file-like objects). Jack Jansen has
2623provided a fix for the Mac, so createfilehandler *is* actually
2624supported there; maybe I can adapt his fix for Windows.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002625
2626
2627Tools and Demos
2628---------------
2629
2630- A new regression test suite is provided, which tests most of the
2631standard and built-in modules. The regression test is run by invoking
2632the script Lib/test/regrtest.py. Barry Warsaw wrote the test harnass;
2633he and Roger Masse contributed most of the new tests.
2634
2635- New tool: faqwiz -- the CGI script that is used to maintain the
2636Python FAQ (http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/cgi-bin/faqw.py). In
2637Tools/faqwiz.
2638
2639- New tool: webchecker -- a simple extensible web robot that, when
2640aimed at a web server, checks that server for dead links. Available
2641are a command line utility as well as a Tkinter based GUI version. In
2642Tools/webchecker. A simplified version of this program is dissected
2643in my article in O'Reilly's WWW Journal, the issue on Scripting
2644Languages (Vol 2, No 2); Scripting the Web with Python (pp 97-120).
2645Includes a parser for robots.txt files by Skip Montanaro.
2646
2647- New small tools: cvsfiles.py (prints a list of all files under CVS
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002648n a particular directory tree), treesync.py (a rather Guido-specific
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002649script to synchronize two source trees, one on Windows NT, the other
2650one on Unix under CVS but accessible from the NT box), and logmerge.py
2651(sort a collection of RCS or CVS logs by date). In Tools/scripts.
2652
2653- The freeze script now also works under Windows (NT). Another
2654feature allows the -p option to be pointed at the Python source tree
2655instead of the installation prefix. This was loosely based on part of
2656xfreeze by Sam Rushing and Bill Tutt.
2657
2658- New examples (Demo/extend) that show how to use the generic
2659extension makefile (Misc/Makefile.pre.in).
2660
2661- Tools/scripts/h2py.py now supports C++ comments.
2662
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002663- Tools/scripts/pystone.py script is upgraded to version 1.1; there
2664was a bug in version 1.0 (distributed with Python 1.4) that leaked
2665memory. Also, in 1.1, the LOOPS variable is incremented to 10000.
2666
2667- Demo/classes/Rat.py completely rewritten by Sjoerd Mullender.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002668
2669
2670Windows (NT and 95)
2671-------------------
2672
2673- New project files for Developer Studio (Visual C++) 5.0 for Windows
2674NT (the old VC++ 4.2 Makefile is also still supported, but will
2675eventually be withdrawn due to its bulkiness).
2676
2677- See the note on the new module search path in the "Miscellaneous" section
2678above.
2679
2680- Support for Win32s (the 32-bit Windows API under Windows 3.1) is
2681basically withdrawn. If it still works for you, you're lucky.
2682
2683- There's a new extension module, msvcrt.c, which provides various
2684low-level operations defined in the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library.
2685These include locking(), setmode(), get_osfhandle(), set_osfhandle(), and
2686console I/O functions like kbhit(), getch() and putch().
2687
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002688- The -u option not only sets the standard I/O streams to unbuffered
2689status, but also sets them in binary mode. (This can also be done
2690using msvcrt.setmode(), by the way.)
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002691
2692- The, sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix variables point to the directory
2693where Python is installed, or to the top of the source tree, if it was run
2694from there.
2695
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002696- The various os.path modules (posixpath, ntpath, macpath) now support
2697passing more than two arguments to the join() function, so
2698os.path.join(a, b, c) is the same as os.path.join(a, os.path.join(b,
2699c)).
2700
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002701- The ntpath module (normally used as os.path) supports ~ to $HOME
2702expansion in expanduser().
2703
2704- The freeze tool now works on Windows.
2705
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002706- See also the Tkinter category for a sad note on
2707_tkinter.createfilehandler().
2708
2709- The truncate() method for file objects now works on Windows.
2710
2711- Py_Initialize() is no longer called when the DLL is loaded. You
Guido van Rossumb68b77f1997-10-07 19:12:50 +00002712must call it yourself.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002713
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002714- The time module's clock() function now has good precision through
2715the use of the Win32 API QueryPerformanceCounter().
2716
2717- Mark Hammond will release Python 1.5 versions of PythonWin and his
2718other Windows specific code: the win32api extensions, COM/ActiveX
2719support, and the MFC interface.
2720
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002721
2722Mac
2723---
2724
Guido van Rossum2da391f1997-08-18 21:17:32 +00002725- As always, the Macintosh port will be done by Jack Jansen. He will
2726make a separate announcement for the Mac specific source code and the
2727binary distribution(s) when these are ready.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002728
2729
Guido van Rossum92664b81997-10-07 00:12:43 +00002730======================================================================