Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | +++++++++++ |
| 2 | Python News |
| 3 | +++++++++++ |
| 4 | |
Skip Montanaro | 4a38583 | 2002-09-20 17:08:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 5 | (editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.) |
| 6 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 14e73b1 | 2003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 7 | What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2? |
| 8 | ================================= |
| 9 | |
David Goodger | f349e26 | 2003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 10 | *Release date: XX-XXX-2003* |
Martin v. Löwis | 14e73b1 | 2003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 11 | |
| 12 | Core and builtins |
| 13 | ----------------- |
| 14 | |
Martin v. Löwis | af6a27a | 2003-01-03 19:16:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 15 | - raw_input can now return Unicode objects. |
| 16 | |
Skip Montanaro | 4abd5f0 | 2003-01-02 20:51:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 17 | - List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function. |
| 18 | Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no |
| 19 | arguments. |
| 20 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 14e73b1 | 2003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 21 | Extension modules |
| 22 | ----------------- |
| 23 | |
| 24 | - fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants. |
| 25 | |
Tim Peters | 0123139 | 2003-01-02 19:10:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 26 | - datetime changes: |
| 27 | |
| 28 | today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest |
Tim Peters | adf6420 | 2003-01-04 06:03:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame^] | 29 | microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an |
| 30 | irritation most likely seen on Windows systems. |
Tim Peters | 0123139 | 2003-01-02 19:10:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 31 | |
Tim Peters | 710fb15 | 2003-01-02 19:35:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 32 | In dt.asdatetime(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration, |
Tim Peters | 397301e | 2003-01-02 21:28:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 33 | ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it |
Tim Peters | adf6420 | 2003-01-04 06:03:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame^] | 34 | as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in |
| 35 | time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports |
| 36 | DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes, |
| 37 | meaning that DST is never in effect). |
Tim Peters | 397301e | 2003-01-02 21:28:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 38 | |
Tim Peters | 7702304 | 2003-01-03 22:35:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 39 | The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object |
| 40 | (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that |
| 41 | was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein |
Tim Peters | 397301e | 2003-01-02 21:28:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 42 | they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI. |
| 43 | |
Tim Peters | 7702304 | 2003-01-03 22:35:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 44 | The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced |
| 45 | by a later example coded by Guido. |
| 46 | |
Tim Peters | adf6420 | 2003-01-04 06:03:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame^] | 47 | datetimetz.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the |
| 48 | input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time |
| 49 | zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight |
| 50 | time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time |
| 51 | ends. See new docs for details. |
| 52 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 14e73b1 | 2003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 53 | Library |
| 54 | ------- |
| 55 | |
Neal Norwitz | bb0246a | 2003-01-03 18:12:28 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 56 | - realpath is now exported when doing from poxixpath import *. |
| 57 | It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath. |
| 58 | See SF bug #659228. |
| 59 | |
David Goodger | f349e26 | 2003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 60 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 14e73b1 | 2003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 61 | Tools/Demos |
| 62 | ----------- |
| 63 | |
David Goodger | f349e26 | 2003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 64 | TBD |
| 65 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 14e73b1 | 2003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 66 | Build |
| 67 | ----- |
| 68 | |
Skip Montanaro | decc6a4 | 2003-01-01 20:07:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 69 | - On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which |
| 70 | used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two |
| 71 | groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and |
| 72 | debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry |
| 73 | compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some |
| 74 | platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by |
| 75 | default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required |
| 76 | flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without |
| 77 | fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build. |
| 78 | |
| 79 | - On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the |
| 80 | relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to |
| 81 | take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project |
| 82 | <http://fink.sf.net/>. |
| 83 | |
| 84 | - A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts |
| 85 | from the Tools/scripts directory. |
| 86 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 14e73b1 | 2003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 87 | C API |
| 88 | ----- |
| 89 | |
David Goodger | f349e26 | 2003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 90 | TBD |
| 91 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 14e73b1 | 2003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 92 | New platforms |
| 93 | ------------- |
| 94 | |
David Goodger | f349e26 | 2003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 95 | TBD |
| 96 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 14e73b1 | 2003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 97 | Tests |
| 98 | ----- |
| 99 | |
David Goodger | f349e26 | 2003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 100 | TBD |
| 101 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 14e73b1 | 2003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 102 | Windows |
| 103 | ------- |
| 104 | |
Tim Peters | bbc5d16 | 2003-01-02 16:02:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 105 | - The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It |
| 106 | wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight. |
| 107 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 14e73b1 | 2003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 108 | Mac |
| 109 | --- |
| 110 | |
David Goodger | f349e26 | 2003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 111 | TBD |
| 112 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 14e73b1 | 2003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 113 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 114 | What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1? |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 115 | ================================= |
| 116 | |
Guido van Rossum | ae54886 | 2002-12-31 15:47:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 117 | *Release date: 31-Dec-2002* |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 118 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 119 | Type/class unification and new-style classes |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 120 | -------------------------------------------- |
Guido van Rossum | 8b1e74b | 2002-11-23 16:28:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 121 | |
Michael W. Hudson | 96bc3b4 | 2002-11-26 14:48:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 122 | - One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes. |
| 123 | |
Guido van Rossum | 8b1e74b | 2002-11-23 16:28:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 124 | - dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2) |
| 125 | is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly, |
Just van Rossum | a797d81 | 2002-11-23 09:45:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 126 | the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has |
Guido van Rossum | 8b1e74b | 2002-11-23 16:28:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 127 | been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has |
Just van Rossum | a797d81 | 2002-11-23 09:45:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 128 | a different meaning than before. |
| 129 | |
Walter Dörwald | f171540 | 2002-11-19 20:49:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 130 | - int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the |
David Goodger | f349e26 | 2003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 131 | integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will |
Walter Dörwald | f171540 | 2002-11-19 20:49:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 132 | all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError. |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 133 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | e0373f8 | 2002-11-15 14:42:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 134 | - Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new |
Guido van Rossum | e343878 | 2002-08-12 03:42:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 135 | class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an |
Raymond Hettinger | f2f2a2c | 2002-08-19 14:25:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 136 | extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool. |
Guido van Rossum | e343878 | 2002-08-12 03:42:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 137 | |
| 138 | - New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up |
| 139 | significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation |
| 140 | and deallocation. |
| 141 | |
| 142 | - The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the |
| 143 | right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]). |
| 144 | |
| 145 | - The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The |
| 146 | types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and |
| 147 | instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in |
| 148 | names but are accessible through the types module, are now also |
| 149 | callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy. |
| 150 | |
| 151 | - Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are |
| 152 | now detected by the garbage collector. |
| 153 | |
| 154 | - Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected. |
| 155 | [SF bug 519621] |
| 156 | |
| 157 | - Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python |
| 158 | identifier. |
| 159 | |
| 160 | - The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and |
| 161 | takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor |
| 162 | ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a |
| 163 | module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this |
| 164 | created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did. |
| 165 | [SF bug 563060] |
| 166 | |
| 167 | - A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type |
| 168 | for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of |
| 169 | types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string": |
| 170 | isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This |
| 171 | is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly. |
| 172 | |
| 173 | - Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__ |
| 174 | method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is |
| 175 | not called. [SF bug #537450] |
| 176 | |
| 177 | - Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444] |
| 178 | |
| 179 | - If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but |
| 180 | doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised. |
| 181 | This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always |
| 182 | raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the |
| 183 | state of the slots would be lost.) |
| 184 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 185 | Core and builtins |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 186 | ----------------- |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 187 | |
Guido van Rossum | a3b8953 | 2002-12-30 22:59:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 188 | - Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed |
Just van Rossum | 01875eb | 2002-12-31 10:22:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 189 | on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python |
| 190 | modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the |
| 191 | zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not |
| 192 | the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are |
Guido van Rossum | a3b8953 | 2002-12-30 22:59:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 193 | compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since |
| 194 | Jython 2.1. |
| 195 | |
Just van Rossum | 01875eb | 2002-12-31 10:22:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 196 | - PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was inititally developed to |
Tim Peters | bbc5d16 | 2003-01-02 16:02:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 197 | support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism. |
Just van Rossum | 01875eb | 2002-12-31 10:22:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 198 | Several new variables have been added to the sys module: |
| 199 | sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these |
| 200 | make extending the import statement much more convenient than |
| 201 | overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of |
| 202 | these, see PEP 302. |
| 203 | |
Michael W. Hudson | cfd3884 | 2002-12-17 16:15:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 204 | - A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a |
| 205 | trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to |
| 206 | exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835] |
| 207 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 20b9135 | 2002-12-12 18:01:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 208 | - The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin |
| 209 | module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available |
| 210 | to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263. |
| 211 | |
Walter Dörwald | d9a6ad3 | 2002-12-12 16:41:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 212 | - issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like |
| 213 | isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to |
| 214 | ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``. |
| 215 | |
Tim Peters | b9099c3 | 2002-11-12 22:08:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 216 | - Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash |
| 217 | by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list |
| 218 | during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of |
| 219 | attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or |
| 220 | length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language. |
| 221 | The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations, |
| 222 | and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that |
| 223 | all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across |
| 224 | releases or implementations. |
| 225 | |
Martin v. Löwis | a844f2d | 2002-10-05 09:46:48 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 226 | - Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented. |
Mark Hammond | 8696ebc | 2002-10-08 02:44:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 227 | All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute, |
| 228 | which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere. |
Martin v. Löwis | a844f2d | 2002-10-05 09:46:48 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 229 | |
Walter Dörwald | 3aeb632 | 2002-09-02 13:14:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 230 | - Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented. |
| 231 | Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized. |
| 232 | |
Guido van Rossum | 45ec02a | 2002-08-19 21:43:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 233 | - A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern(): |
| 234 | interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference |
| 235 | to the return value intern() around to get the benefit. |
| 236 | |
Guido van Rossum | f808b89 | 2002-08-16 03:38:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 237 | - Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now |
| 238 | issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword. |
| 239 | |
Michael W. Hudson | dd32a91 | 2002-08-15 14:59:02 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 240 | - SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to |
| 241 | call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call |
Michael W. Hudson | cfd3884 | 2002-12-17 16:15:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 242 | PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up |
| 243 | to date when there is a trace function set). |
Michael W. Hudson | dd32a91 | 2002-08-15 14:59:02 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 244 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9be8946 | 2002-08-14 16:11:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 245 | - There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn |
| 246 | about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer |
| 247 | result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer |
| 248 | unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that |
| 249 | PEP. The warnings are about the following situations: |
| 250 | |
| 251 | - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range |
| 252 | [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but |
| 253 | in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit |
| 254 | pattern. |
| 255 | |
| 256 | - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose |
| 257 | bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be |
| 258 | precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value |
| 259 | as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n. |
| 260 | |
| 261 | - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as |
| 262 | unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; |
| 263 | this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string |
| 264 | formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will |
| 265 | show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff"; |
| 266 | in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1"). |
| 267 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9a2eda5 | 2002-12-31 02:12:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 268 | - The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have |
| 269 | been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be |
| 270 | per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables. |
| 271 | In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100 |
| 272 | bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that |
| 273 | relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded |
| 274 | applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will |
| 275 | increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount. |
Skip Montanaro | 979c74b | 2002-09-03 21:25:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 276 | |
Tim Peters | d64c1de | 2002-08-12 17:36:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 277 | - When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called |
| 278 | Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the |
| 279 | inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits, |
| 280 | Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is |
| 281 | log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may |
Tim Peters | 012c0a3 | 2002-08-16 03:40:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 282 | be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides |
| 283 | the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm |
| 284 | appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers |
| 285 | (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a |
| 286 | simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with, |
| 287 | e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package |
| 288 | devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it. |
Tim Peters | 5af4e6c | 2002-08-12 02:31:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 289 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | cc8764c | 2002-08-11 12:23:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 290 | - u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an |
| 291 | integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals. |
| 292 | |
Guido van Rossum | deb0936 | 2002-08-09 17:16:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 293 | - The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The |
| 294 | mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are |
| 295 | mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the |
| 296 | higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile(). |
| 297 | Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the |
| 298 | new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same |
| 299 | functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe |
| 300 | interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks |
| 301 | to Zack Weinberg! |
| 302 | |
Guido van Rossum | d81a983 | 2002-08-09 15:57:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 303 | - When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__, |
| 304 | 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously |
| 305 | invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int |
| 306 | type. This has been fixed now. |
| 307 | |
Barry Warsaw | d79f683 | 2002-08-06 17:01:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 308 | - Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1. |
| 309 | This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of |
| 310 | any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now. |
| 311 | |
Guido van Rossum | b57089c | 2002-08-06 16:20:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 312 | - File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now |
| 313 | returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to |
| 314 | f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a |
| 315 | readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing |
| 316 | f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right. |
| 317 | Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations |
| 318 | don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost |
| 319 | to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding |
Guido van Rossum | bffb2ef | 2002-08-09 17:17:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 320 | module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh! |
Guido van Rossum | b57089c | 2002-08-06 16:20:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 321 | |
Guido van Rossum | de392d3 | 2002-08-05 14:17:20 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 322 | - Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A |
| 323 | comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first |
| 324 | or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding. |
Martin v. Löwis | 00f1e3f | 2002-08-04 17:29:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 325 | |
Tim Peters | f47630f | 2002-08-01 02:34:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 326 | - list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results |
| 327 | may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many |
| 328 | kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation, |
| 329 | and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on |
| 330 | several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A |
| 331 | precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too), |
| 332 | although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A |
| 333 | potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of |
Skip Montanaro | a2a07bc | 2002-09-30 15:23:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 334 | len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible |
Tim Peters | f47630f | 2002-08-01 02:34:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 335 | for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function |
| 336 | does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details. |
| 337 | |
Guido van Rossum | 2d5389c | 2002-07-23 03:44:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 338 | - All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been |
| 339 | raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also |
| 340 | raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to |
| 341 | this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program |
| 342 | breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an |
| 343 | iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce |
| 344 | this.) |
| 345 | |
Mark Hammond | c0e3515 | 2002-07-16 01:32:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 346 | - Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with |
| 347 | other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught, |
Raymond Hettinger | f2f2a2c | 2002-08-19 14:25:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 348 | and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the |
Mark Hammond | c0e3515 | 2002-07-16 01:32:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 349 | process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will |
Tim Peters | 5af4e6c | 2002-08-12 02:31:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 350 | interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes |
| 351 | created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work |
Mark Hammond | 8f3afc7 | 2002-08-10 06:26:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 352 | reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.) |
| 353 | [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232] |
Mark Hammond | c0e3515 | 2002-07-16 01:32:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 354 | |
Mark Hammond | 8696ebc | 2002-10-08 02:44:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 355 | - sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This |
| 356 | returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows |
| 357 | currently running. |
| 358 | |
Raymond Hettinger | 5a04aec | 2002-06-25 00:25:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 359 | - Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return |
| 360 | a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time, |
| 361 | but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count |
| 362 | was one or when the slice range was all inclusive. |
| 363 | |
Walter Dörwald | 3430d70 | 2002-06-17 10:43:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 364 | - Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated |
| 365 | as directory names. |
| 366 | |
Neal Norwitz | 1f68fc7 | 2002-06-14 00:50:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 367 | - Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods |
| 368 | so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951] |
| 369 | |
Guido van Rossum | c5fe5eb | 2002-06-12 03:45:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 370 | - Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the |
| 371 | finally clause. [SF bug 567538] |
| 372 | |
Michael W. Hudson | 5efaf7e | 2002-06-11 10:55:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 373 | - Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices |
Guido van Rossum | 2e82e71 | 2002-06-13 11:41:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 374 | with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1] |
| 375 | gives "dlrow olleh". |
Michael W. Hudson | 5efaf7e | 2002-06-11 10:55:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 376 | |
Neal Norwitz | d68f517 | 2002-05-29 15:54:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 377 | - A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide |
| 378 | direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated. |
| 379 | The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending |
| 380 | deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning:: |
| 381 | as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code. |
| 382 | |
Fred Drake | d0ba636 | 2002-05-02 21:28:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 383 | - Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as |
| 384 | promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist() |
| 385 | method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been |
| 386 | removed. |
| 387 | |
Guido van Rossum | 7dab242 | 2002-04-26 19:40:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 388 | - New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example: |
| 389 | enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c"). |
| 390 | The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object. |
| 391 | |
Neil Schemenauer | 89e3ee0 | 2002-04-26 01:58:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 392 | - The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means |
| 393 | that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value |
| 394 | to __debug__. |
| 395 | |
Walter Dörwald | 068325e | 2002-04-15 13:36:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 396 | - A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric |
| 397 | string to the left with zeros. For example, |
| 398 | "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123". |
| 399 | |
Guido van Rossum | 862fe3c | 2002-04-15 12:36:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 400 | - Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but |
| 401 | these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being |
| 402 | deprecated now. |
| 403 | |
Guido van Rossum | 26dd830 | 2002-04-26 20:11:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 404 | - String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take |
| 405 | an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For |
| 406 | example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo". |
Guido van Rossum | 4904204 | 2002-04-13 00:59:05 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 407 | |
Guido van Rossum | c0d3f4e | 2002-11-27 13:10:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 408 | - There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict |
| 409 | class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a |
| 410 | dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a |
| 411 | single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing |
| 412 | duplicates from sequences. |
Raymond Hettinger | e33d3df | 2002-11-27 07:29:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 413 | |
Guido van Rossum | c69343b | 2002-04-12 19:22:48 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 414 | - Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the |
| 415 | value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949] |
| 416 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4783446 | 2002-04-04 15:21:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 417 | - A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in |
| 418 | names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry |
| 419 | other operations that return a truth value have been changed to |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 21b23b0 | 2002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 420 | return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this |
Guido van Rossum | 4783446 | 2002-04-04 15:21:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 421 | is backward compatible. |
| 422 | |
Guido van Rossum | 95b62a6 | 2002-03-29 01:07:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 423 | - Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions, |
| 424 | deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the |
| 425 | garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code; |
| 426 | access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable |
| 427 | could access a pointer to freed memory. |
| 428 | |
Guido van Rossum | fe0ca4a | 2002-06-18 21:20:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 429 | - The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by |
| 430 | default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and |
| 431 | deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included, |
| 432 | Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions |
| 433 | and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2 |
| 434 | onwards. |
Neil Schemenauer | 9d50d13 | 2002-03-22 17:06:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 435 | |
Martin v. Löwis | cfeb3b6 | 2002-03-03 21:30:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 436 | - PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions |
| 437 | that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors. |
| 438 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | e92e0a9 | 2002-02-09 11:28:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 439 | - The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates |
| 440 | correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones. |
| 441 | |
Guido van Rossum | add8806 | 2002-08-15 14:01:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 442 | - Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U' |
| 443 | instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line |
| 444 | ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is |
| 445 | recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to |
| 446 | '\n', the standard Python line end character. |
| 447 | |
Neal Norwitz | 649b759 | 2002-01-01 19:07:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 448 | - file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed: |
| 449 | Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise |
| 450 | a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called. |
| 451 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 21b23b0 | 2002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 452 | - sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument. |
Neal Norwitz | 0c766a0 | 2002-03-27 13:03:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 453 | An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used. |
| 454 | |
Gustavo Niemeyer | 17c5a33 | 2002-12-16 14:09:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 455 | - Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the |
| 456 | general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will |
| 457 | evaluate f1 first. |
Gustavo Niemeyer | 78429a6 | 2002-12-16 13:54:02 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 458 | |
Gustavo Niemeyer | 786ddb2 | 2002-12-16 18:12:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 459 | - Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read() |
| 460 | could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error. |
| 461 | |
Neil Schemenauer | b983aa0 | 2002-12-30 20:22:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 462 | - The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat |
| 463 | slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots. |
| 464 | This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807). |
| 465 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 466 | Extension modules |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 467 | ----------------- |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 468 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 24a880b | 2002-12-31 12:55:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 469 | - posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx. |
| 470 | |
Guido van Rossum | a3b8953 | 2002-12-30 22:59:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 471 | - A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip |
| 472 | archives. |
| 473 | |
Tim Peters | e820cb6 | 2002-12-16 20:57:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 474 | - The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and |
| 475 | times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and |
| 476 | favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See |
| 477 | |
| 478 | http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage |
| 479 | |
Martin v. Löwis | ffad633 | 2002-11-26 09:28:05 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 480 | - _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which |
| 481 | have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects |
| 482 | are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method, |
Martin v. Löwis | 8c8aa5d | 2002-11-26 21:39:48 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 483 | or Tkinter.wantobjects. |
Martin v. Löwis | ffad633 | 2002-11-26 09:28:05 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 484 | |
Barry Warsaw | c27f4bd | 2002-12-30 21:03:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 485 | - The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has |
| 486 | been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is |
| 487 | still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore, |
| 488 | and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from |
| 489 | 3.0 to 4.1. |
Martin v. Löwis | ef546b3 | 2002-11-19 08:12:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 490 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 677bde2 | 2002-11-23 22:08:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 491 | - unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization |
| 492 | and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs. |
Martin v. Löwis | 7d41e29 | 2002-11-23 12:22:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 493 | |
Neal Norwitz | 94a83fd | 2002-11-02 17:46:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 494 | - resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints. |
| 495 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 080689c | 2002-10-26 14:42:02 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 496 | - readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if |
| 497 | sys.stdin/stdout changes. |
| 498 | |
Guido van Rossum | ba60297 | 2002-10-01 18:18:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 499 | - The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for |
| 500 | Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are |
| 501 | supported. |
| 502 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 658009a | 2002-09-16 17:26:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 503 | - cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class. |
| 504 | |
Martin v. Löwis | a19bfe0 | 2002-10-16 18:28:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 505 | - The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers |
| 506 | after stat_float_times has been called. |
Martin v. Löwis | 94717ed | 2002-09-09 14:24:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 507 | |
Neal Norwitz | b567392 | 2002-09-05 21:48:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 508 | - If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the |
| 509 | file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792] |
| 510 | |
Guido van Rossum | b57089c | 2002-08-06 16:20:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 511 | - The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence. |
| 512 | |
Guido van Rossum | 79f0a10 | 2002-07-23 03:32:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 513 | - The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a |
| 514 | Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it). |
| 515 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9562bcf | 2002-06-14 21:31:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 516 | - The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that |
| 517 | only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer |
| 518 | functions but callable type objects. |
| 519 | |
Tim Peters | 81b9251 | 2002-04-29 01:37:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 520 | - The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename. |
Anthony Baxter | 8388895 | 2002-04-23 02:11:05 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 521 | This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be |
Tim Peters | 81b9251 | 2002-04-29 01:37:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 522 | written to disk. |
Anthony Baxter | 8388895 | 2002-04-23 02:11:05 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 523 | |
Martin v. Löwis | b96152c | 2002-12-31 13:20:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 524 | - posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and |
| 525 | posix.getpgid have been added where available. |
Martin v. Löwis | 06a83e9 | 2002-04-14 10:19:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 526 | |
Martin v. Löwis | f0a4668 | 2002-11-03 17:20:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 527 | - The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It |
| 528 | also has a new function getpreferredencoding. |
Martin v. Löwis | 2e64c34 | 2002-03-27 18:49:02 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 529 | |
Tim Peters | fbf74f2 | 2002-03-14 19:06:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 530 | - A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular |
| 531 | third party compression library used by some Python modules. The |
| 532 | hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of |
| 533 | Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4. |
| 534 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 688357e | 2002-04-08 21:28:20 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 535 | - pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic |
| 536 | field names. |
Martin v. Löwis | 29001ff | 2002-03-01 10:47:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 537 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 9986633 | 2002-03-01 10:27:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 538 | - array.array is now a type object. A new format character |
| 539 | 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and |
| 540 | .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__ |
| 541 | and __imul__. |
| 542 | |
Neal Norwitz | e790eae | 2002-01-01 21:14:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 543 | - dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case |
Martin v. Löwis | 9322727 | 2002-01-01 20:18:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 544 | of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open |
| 545 | is called. |
| 546 | |
Michael W. Hudson | 34f20ea | 2002-05-27 15:08:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 547 | - signal.sigpending, signal.sigprocmask and signal.sigsuspend have |
| 548 | been added where available. |
| 549 | |
Skip Montanaro | 8e790e7 | 2002-09-03 13:25:17 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 550 | - The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates |
| 551 | to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the |
| 552 | interpreter was compiled. |
| 553 | |
Gustavo Niemeyer | 4e7be06 | 2002-11-06 14:06:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 554 | - Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab') |
| 555 | when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now |
| 556 | returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of |
Gustavo Niemeyer | fbceb01 | 2002-11-06 18:44:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 557 | lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example, |
Gustavo Niemeyer | 4e7be06 | 2002-11-06 14:06:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 558 | when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be |
| 559 | 1, not 2. |
| 560 | |
Gustavo Niemeyer | c523b04 | 2002-11-07 03:28:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 561 | - Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit |
| 562 | before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite |
| 563 | loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer |
| 564 | limit. |
| 565 | |
Thomas Heller | 95cb7e4 | 2002-11-07 16:23:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 566 | - The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the |
| 567 | letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes |
| 568 | bug #623464. |
| 569 | |
Greg Ward | 6c58d46 | 2003-01-03 18:02:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 570 | - The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by |
| 571 | ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of |
| 572 | OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the |
| 573 | OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2. |
| 574 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 575 | Library |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 576 | ------- |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 577 | |
Guido van Rossum | 747f806 | 2003-01-03 16:33:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 578 | - imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder). |
| 579 | |
Just van Rossum | 5e156ad | 2002-12-31 16:38:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 580 | - Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library; |
| 581 | slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule |
| 582 | reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow |
| 583 | with Python 2.3a2. |
| 584 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 96a60e4 | 2002-12-31 13:11:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 585 | - os.path exposes getctime. |
| 586 | |
Raymond Hettinger | af72d52 | 2002-12-29 20:14:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 587 | - unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual() |
| 588 | and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparision |
| 589 | by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing |
| 590 | the result to zero. Approximate comparision is essential for |
| 591 | unit tests of floating point results. |
| 592 | |
Raymond Hettinger | e11b510 | 2002-12-25 16:37:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 593 | - calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than |
| 594 | the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates |
| 595 | has been increased. |
| 596 | |
Michael W. Hudson | cfd3884 | 2002-12-17 16:15:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 597 | - pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be |
| 598 | executed. |
| 599 | |
Thomas Heller | 1b3b49d | 2002-12-12 19:13:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 600 | - The distutils created windows installers now can run a |
| 601 | postinstallation script. |
| 602 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 4581cfa | 2002-11-22 08:23:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 603 | - doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to |
| 604 | test the current module. |
| 605 | |
Martin v. Löwis | f86e8ef | 2002-11-22 08:08:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 606 | - When cancelling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard |
| 607 | interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on |
| 608 | client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to |
| 609 | the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that |
| 610 | this behavior needs to be controlled. |
| 611 | |
Guido van Rossum | 545c250 | 2002-11-15 13:19:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 612 | - A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for |
Andrew M. Kuchling | e0373f8 | 2002-11-15 14:42:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 613 | command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg |
Guido van Rossum | 545c250 | 2002-11-15 13:19:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 614 | Ward's Optik package. |
| 615 | |
Raymond Hettinger | 7994716 | 2002-11-15 06:46:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 616 | - UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary |
| 617 | methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface. |
| 618 | This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable |
| 619 | for dictionaries (such as the shelve module). |
| 620 | |
| 621 | - shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports |
| 622 | all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent |
Andrew M. Kuchling | e0373f8 | 2002-11-15 14:42:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 623 | storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind. |
Raymond Hettinger | 7994716 | 2002-11-15 06:46:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 624 | |
Skip Montanaro | 3bf99e3 | 2002-12-08 18:36:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 625 | - shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional |
| 626 | binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the |
| 627 | shelf are binary pickles. |
| 628 | |
Guido van Rossum | fda0674 | 2002-11-13 16:29:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 629 | - A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP |
| 630 | 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip. |
| 631 | |
Walter Dörwald | 4dbf192 | 2002-11-06 16:53:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 632 | - StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs |
| 633 | modules are iterators now. |
| 634 | |
Tim Peters | 9288f95 | 2002-11-05 20:38:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 635 | - gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work |
| 636 | now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large |
| 637 | file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can |
| 638 | record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that |
| 639 | some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file |
| 640 | size. |
Tim Peters | fb0ea52 | 2002-11-04 19:50:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 641 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 74b51ac | 2002-10-26 14:50:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 642 | - xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references |
| 643 | with their entity value. |
| 644 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 77ac429 | 2002-10-15 15:11:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 645 | - Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument. |
| 646 | |
Martin v. Löwis | b24e347 | 2002-10-13 10:28:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 647 | - Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple |
| 648 | option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s. |
Martin v. Löwis | 2ec3627 | 2002-10-13 10:22:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 649 | |
Martin v. Löwis | b24e347 | 2002-10-13 10:28:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 650 | - Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that |
| 651 | tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a |
Tim Peters | fb0ea52 | 2002-11-04 19:50:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 652 | dictionary when invoked with no argument. |
Martin v. Löwis | 6ce1315 | 2002-10-10 14:36:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 653 | |
Guido van Rossum | 2b492b6 | 2002-10-09 21:40:48 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 654 | - Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of |
| 655 | calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or |
| 656 | whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you |
| 657 | want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve |
| 658 | all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the |
| 659 | following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's |
| 660 | main(): |
| 661 | |
| 662 | import locale |
| 663 | locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "") |
| 664 | |
Martin v. Löwis | e9ce0b0 | 2002-10-07 13:23:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 665 | - shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an |
| 666 | exception at the end, instead of printing error messages. |
| 667 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 97047e2 | 2002-10-04 11:55:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 668 | - Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only |
| 669 | replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric |
| 670 | characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python |
| 671 | package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated |
| 672 | to the new standard. |
| 673 | |
Walter Dörwald | 5ccaf8f | 2002-09-06 16:15:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 674 | - mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which |
| 675 | returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and |
| 676 | add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and |
| 677 | an extension to the database. |
| 678 | |
Guido van Rossum | d8ab35c | 2002-08-19 16:25:46 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 679 | - New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable |
| 680 | set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's |
| 681 | also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets |
| 682 | or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which |
Raymond Hettinger | ef8b9c6 | 2002-12-09 08:56:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 683 | is the base class of the two. |
Guido van Rossum | d8ab35c | 2002-08-19 16:25:46 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 684 | |
Raymond Hettinger | f2f2a2c | 2002-08-19 14:25:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 685 | - Added operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to a**b. |
| 686 | |
Raymond Hettinger | f24eb35 | 2002-11-12 17:41:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 687 | - Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement. |
Tim Peters | b9099c3 | 2002-11-12 22:08:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 688 | Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population. |
Raymond Hettinger | f24eb35 | 2002-11-12 17:41:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 689 | |
Tim Peters | 012c0a3 | 2002-08-16 03:40:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 690 | - random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises |
| 691 | OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start' |
| 692 | and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's |
| 693 | bounded integers. |
| 694 | |
Raymond Hettinger | 40f6217 | 2002-12-29 23:03:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 695 | - Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core |
| 696 | generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C, |
| 697 | threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically |
| 698 | large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit |
| 699 | precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator |
| 700 | in existence. |
| 701 | |
| 702 | The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new |
| 703 | generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the |
| 704 | existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead() |
| 705 | continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of |
| 706 | non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies |
| 707 | on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward. |
| 708 | |
| 709 | The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for |
| 710 | the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a |
| 711 | new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward |
| 712 | compatibility and to make an alternate generator available. |
| 713 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4a57c33 | 2002-08-02 18:05:20 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 714 | - New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to |
| 715 | Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining |
| 716 | write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps. |
| 717 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 58e2ff2 | 2002-07-12 14:40:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 718 | - New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos. |
| 719 | |
Tim Peters | 943382c | 2002-07-07 03:59:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 720 | - binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit |
| 721 | platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs, |
| 722 | crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value |
| 723 | as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform. |
| 724 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 7d650ca | 2002-06-30 15:05:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 725 | - xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding |
| 726 | argument. |
| 727 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9f7549b | 2002-06-10 21:39:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 728 | - Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its |
| 729 | __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on |
| 730 | the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of |
| 731 | custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type' |
| 732 | [SF patch 560794]. |
| 733 | |
Guido van Rossum | 5033c8e | 2002-06-07 12:40:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 734 | - Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is |
| 735 | a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception |
| 736 | if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout |
Guido van Rossum | 79f0a10 | 2002-07-23 03:32:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 737 | mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function, |
| 738 | socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets |
| 739 | created henceforth. |
Guido van Rossum | 5033c8e | 2002-06-07 12:40:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 740 | |
| 741 | - getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option |
| 742 | processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments. |
Martin v. Löwis | 446a25f | 2002-06-06 10:58:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 743 | |
Michael W. Hudson | b0dc1a3 | 2002-06-04 18:27:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 744 | - Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for |
| 745 | exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects |
| 746 | changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error, |
| 747 | tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error. |
Neal Norwitz | b5b5a26 | 2002-06-04 17:14:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 748 | |
Walter Dörwald | 474458d | 2002-06-04 15:16:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 749 | - Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE, |
| 750 | BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte |
| 751 | Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and |
| 752 | big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names |
| 753 | BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2. |
| 754 | |
Guido van Rossum | f925782 | 2002-06-18 20:43:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 755 | - Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians(). |
Raymond Hettinger | 87f59ee | 2002-05-13 04:17:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 756 | |
Raymond Hettinger | 866964c | 2002-12-14 19:51:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 757 | - math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]). |
| 758 | |
Raymond Hettinger | 9b1df1d | 2002-05-12 06:07:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 759 | - ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing |
| 760 | for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which |
| 761 | was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may |
| 762 | create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior |
| 763 | and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not |
| 764 | identical to None. |
| 765 | |
Tim Peters | 46c04e1 | 2002-05-05 20:40:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 766 | - random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else, |
| 767 | and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other |
| 768 | words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of |
| 769 | results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly |
| 770 | mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different |
| 771 | results now. |
| 772 | |
Fred Drake | 7f781c9 | 2002-05-01 20:33:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 773 | - The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that |
| 774 | provided by cPickle.Pickler. |
| 775 | |
Tim Peters | 81b9251 | 2002-04-29 01:37:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 776 | - difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of |
| 777 | which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For |
| 778 | comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better |
| 779 | than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk |
| 780 | argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is |
| 781 | that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied |
| 782 | to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program |
| 783 | text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines). |
| 784 | |
Guido van Rossum | 256705b | 2002-04-23 13:29:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 785 | - New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module. |
| 786 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 1ec71ea | 2002-04-17 20:33:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 787 | - New distutils commands for building packagers were added to |
| 788 | support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX. |
| 789 | |
| 790 | - distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class |
| 791 | command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers. |
| 792 | This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage |
| 793 | people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD |
| 794 | and other systems. |
| 795 | |
Guido van Rossum | f925782 | 2002-06-18 20:43:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 796 | - The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a |
| 797 | NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they |
| 798 | used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error -- |
| 799 | UTF-16 is a 2-byte encoding and the C lib's line reading APIs don't |
Marc-André Lemburg | 4179a01 | 2002-04-05 12:15:05 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 800 | work well with these. |
| 801 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 5c137c2 | 2002-03-18 12:44:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 802 | - compileall now supports quiet operation. |
| 803 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 21b23b0 | 2002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 804 | - The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent |
Martin v. Löwis | 587c98c | 2002-03-17 18:37:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 805 | connections. |
| 806 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | a5d2b4c | 2002-02-16 18:23:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 807 | - socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main |
| 808 | _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper |
| 809 | which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working. |
| 810 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 37aa580 | 2002-02-10 21:42:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 811 | - encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character |
| 812 | sets |
| 813 | |
Guido van Rossum | 606fe4e | 2001-12-28 20:57:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 814 | - ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use |
| 815 | "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host |
| 816 | name. |
| 817 | |
Fred Drake | 3673612 | 2002-01-10 13:50:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 818 | - webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that |
| 819 | arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was |
| 820 | passed in. |
| 821 | |
Tim Peters | 11bd994 | 2002-02-01 00:52:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 822 | - gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and |
Martin v. Löwis | a55ffae | 2002-01-11 06:58:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 823 | gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback |
Martin v. Löwis | d899605 | 2002-11-21 21:45:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 824 | on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means |
| 825 | of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext. |
Martin v. Löwis | 1be6419 | 2002-01-11 06:33:28 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 826 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 9668b93 | 2002-01-12 11:27:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 827 | - distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option. |
| 828 | |
Walter Dörwald | b25c2b0 | 2002-03-21 10:38:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 829 | - warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument. |
| 830 | |
Fred Drake | fed7e85 | 2002-04-04 19:36:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 831 | - The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create |
| 832 | circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed |
| 833 | to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474] |
| 834 | |
Barry Warsaw | 47f3e2c | 2002-05-20 00:14:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 835 | - The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless |
| 836 | of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF, |
| 837 | or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments |
| 838 | has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always |
Barry Warsaw | 497e5c4 | 2002-12-30 19:27:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 839 | honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified. |
Barry Warsaw | 47f3e2c | 2002-05-20 00:14:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 840 | |
David Goodger | f349e26 | 2003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 841 | - distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++ |
Gustavo Niemeyer | f8ca836 | 2002-11-05 16:50:05 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 842 | compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if |
David Goodger | f349e26 | 2003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 843 | running under \*nix. |
Gustavo Niemeyer | f8ca836 | 2002-11-05 16:50:05 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 844 | |
| 845 | - New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression |
| 846 | library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression |
| 847 | functions, and types for sequential (de)compression. |
| 848 | |
David Goodger | f349e26 | 2003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 849 | - New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints |
Barry Warsaw | 5d8d618 | 2002-11-05 22:41:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 850 | the value of its expression argument. |
| 851 | |
Gustavo Niemeyer | fbceb01 | 2002-11-06 18:44:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 852 | - Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in |
| 853 | the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in |
| 854 | the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file. |
| 855 | |
Gustavo Niemeyer | 1456fde | 2002-11-25 17:25:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 856 | - Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a |
| 857 | unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for |
| 858 | skipstone browser was included. |
| 859 | |
Gustavo Niemeyer | d5ae01a | 2002-12-16 13:11:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 860 | - Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of |
| 861 | strings were used as parameters for certain functions. |
| 862 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 863 | Tools/Demos |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 864 | ----------- |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 865 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 0d1fdea | 2002-11-22 08:36:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 866 | - pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module |
| 867 | names in addition to accepting file names. |
| 868 | |
Guido van Rossum | 923e4ef | 2002-09-17 20:58:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 869 | - The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they |
| 870 | were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions |
| 871 | are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are |
| 872 | still used and useful.) |
| 873 | |
Fred Drake | 40813b1 | 2002-08-05 15:24:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 874 | - IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also |
| 875 | deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It |
| 876 | allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them |
| 877 | in the locale's encoding. |
Martin v. Löwis | 98ce7b7 | 2002-08-05 15:11:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 878 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 4626009 | 2002-04-04 16:17:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 879 | - freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules, |
| 880 | unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in |
| 881 | the generated binary. |
| 882 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 883 | Build |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 884 | ----- |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 885 | |
Martin v. Löwis | dc46175 | 2002-11-06 21:59:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 886 | - On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically. |
| 887 | |
Guido van Rossum | 6b3db55 | 2002-09-25 15:02:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 888 | - The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless |
| 889 | except in the hands of experts. |
| 890 | |
Tim Peters | f47630f | 2002-08-01 02:34:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 891 | - The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC |
Guido van Rossum | 6b3db55 | 2002-09-25 15:02:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 892 | and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions |
| 893 | will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros |
| 894 | are deprecated. |
Neal Norwitz | 1389f3e | 2002-07-22 13:21:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 895 | |
Tim Peters | c6a3ff6 | 2002-07-08 22:11:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 896 | - A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or |
| 897 | get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected. |
| 898 | Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires |
| 899 | that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that |
| 900 | COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug |
| 901 | builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS |
| 902 | builds. |
| 903 | |
Tim Peters | 943382c | 2002-07-07 03:59:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 904 | - Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option. |
| 905 | The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges |
| 906 | that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules |
| 907 | that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension |
| 908 | type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the |
| 909 | Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used |
| 910 | to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the |
| 911 | new type. |
| 912 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 0cec0ff | 2002-07-28 16:33:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 913 | - According to Annex F of the current C standard, |
Tim Peters | 1de41bf | 2002-07-03 03:31:20 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 914 | |
| 915 | The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs, |
| 916 | HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are |
| 917 | positive infinities. |
| 918 | |
| 919 | Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol |
| 920 | Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL. |
| 921 | pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered |
| 922 | other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines |
| 923 | HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something |
| 924 | that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about |
| 925 | is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here: |
| 926 | |
| 927 | http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm |
| 928 | |
| 929 | Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help! |
| 930 | |
Martin v. Löwis | a3fb4f7 | 2002-06-09 13:33:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 931 | - The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the |
| 932 | doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the |
| 933 | size of the executable. |
| 934 | |
Guido van Rossum | add8806 | 2002-08-15 14:01:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 935 | - The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix |
| 936 | it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the |
| 937 | configure script. On other platforms, remove |
| 938 | WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h. |
Tim Peters | 639295f | 2002-04-21 07:30:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 939 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 1142de3 | 2002-03-29 16:28:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 940 | - On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared. |
| 941 | |
Tim Peters | 8deda70 | 2002-03-30 10:06:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 942 | - All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS |
| 943 | preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they |
| 944 | controlled stopped being experimental long ago. |
Tim Peters | 1f7df35 | 2002-03-29 03:29:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 945 | |
Fred Drake | 7d28b73 | 2002-05-02 21:17:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 946 | - The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as |
| 947 | well as Unix. |
| 948 | |
Skip Montanaro | 57454e5 | 2002-06-14 20:30:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 949 | - The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version |
| 950 | skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the |
| 951 | installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these |
| 952 | modules in the README file for details. |
| 953 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 954 | C API |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 955 | ----- |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 956 | |
Neil Schemenauer | 6c19476 | 2002-11-18 16:19:39 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 957 | - PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects. |
| 958 | This is a result of these types having a partially defined |
Guido van Rossum | 1d26740 | 2002-11-18 16:27:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 959 | tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that |
Walter Dörwald | a1a61f9 | 2002-11-19 21:20:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 960 | PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior. |
Guido van Rossum | 1d26740 | 2002-11-18 16:27:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 961 | It may be deprecated.) |
Neil Schemenauer | 6c19476 | 2002-11-18 16:19:39 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 962 | |
Guido van Rossum | 45ec02a | 2002-08-19 21:43:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 963 | - The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member |
| 964 | ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some |
| 965 | platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of |
| 966 | the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been |
| 967 | incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned |
| 968 | strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned |
| 969 | strings are now usually mortal; theres a new API, |
| 970 | PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings. |
| 971 | (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while |
| 972 | making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in |
| 973 | it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer |
| 974 | aligned.) |
| 975 | |
Guido van Rossum | fdb8648 | 2002-08-14 21:20:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 976 | - The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods' |
| 977 | argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common |
| 978 | now that factories can be types rather than functions. |
| 979 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | cc8764c | 2002-08-11 12:23:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 980 | - New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C |
| 981 | level. |
| 982 | |
Thomas Heller | 085358a | 2002-07-29 14:27:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 983 | - New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and |
| 984 | PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to |
| 985 | PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and |
| 986 | PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify |
| 987 | the exception type to raise. Available on Windows. |
| 988 | |
Tim Peters | 7c321a8 | 2002-07-09 02:57:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 989 | - Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It |
| 990 | was previously declared without const. This should not affect working |
| 991 | code. |
| 992 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 01f94bd | 2002-05-08 08:44:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 993 | - Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls |
| 994 | sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without |
| 995 | adjusting for negative indices. |
| 996 | |
Fred Drake | d0ba636 | 2002-05-02 21:28:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 997 | - PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1. |
| 998 | This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange |
| 999 | object. |
| 1000 | |
Guido van Rossum | 517c7d4 | 2002-04-26 02:49:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1001 | - PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's |
| 1002 | coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the |
| 1003 | CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies. |
| 1004 | |
Skip Montanaro | a2a07bc | 2002-09-30 15:23:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1005 | - The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to |
| 1006 | "``void (*)(void *)``". |
Neil Schemenauer | 9344b14 | 2002-04-12 23:00:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1007 | |
| 1008 | - PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros. |
| 1009 | |
Guido van Rossum | 0986d82 | 2002-04-08 01:38:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1010 | - A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously, |
| 1011 | when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it |
| 1012 | was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type, |
| 1013 | where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type. |
| 1014 | |
| 1015 | - PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does. |
| 1016 | |
Neil Schemenauer | c9abc1d | 2002-05-08 14:14:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1017 | - The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed. |
Neil Schemenauer | 9d50d13 | 2002-03-22 17:06:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1018 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 21b23b0 | 2002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1019 | - The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is |
Marc-André Lemburg | 3e3eacb | 2002-01-09 16:21:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1020 | without going through the buffer API. |
| 1021 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1022 | - The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``. |
Martin v. Löwis | 7198a52 | 2002-01-01 19:59:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1023 | |
Tim Peters | 10a3bb5 | 2001-12-25 19:07:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1024 | - An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This |
| 1025 | hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has |
| 1026 | been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created |
| 1027 | conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless. |
| 1028 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1029 | - Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided |
| 1030 | to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish! |
| 1031 | |
Tim Peters | fb05db2 | 2002-03-11 00:24:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1032 | - Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number |
Marc-André Lemburg | e92e0a9 | 2002-02-09 11:28:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1033 | scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details. |
| 1034 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1035 | New platforms |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1036 | ------------- |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1037 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 79acb9e | 2002-12-06 12:48:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1038 | - OpenVMS is now supported. |
| 1039 | |
Martin v. Löwis | f90ae20 | 2002-06-11 06:22:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1040 | - AtheOS is now supported. |
| 1041 | |
Andrew MacIntyre | 161ad0e | 2002-08-04 07:25:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1042 | - the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported. |
| 1043 | |
Martin v. Löwis | a6e9758 | 2002-01-01 18:41:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1044 | - GNU/Hurd is now supported. |
| 1045 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1046 | Tests |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1047 | ----- |
| 1048 | |
Fred Drake | 4dd0f7e | 2002-11-26 21:44:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1049 | - The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow |
| 1050 | all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything |
| 1051 | except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'. |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1052 | |
| 1053 | Windows |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1054 | ------- |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1055 | |
Tim Peters | 19cf4ee | 2002-11-23 03:49:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1056 | - The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the |
| 1057 | Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge |
| 1058 | improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many |
| 1059 | bugs. |
| 1060 | XXX What are the licensing issues here? |
Tim Peters | 84c7a3f | 2002-11-23 18:48:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1061 | XXX If a user has a database created with a previous verion of |
| 1062 | XXX Python, what must they do to convert it? |
| 1063 | XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt). |
Tim Peters | 19cf4ee | 2002-11-23 03:49:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1064 | XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1. |
Tim Peters | e820cb6 | 2002-12-16 20:57:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1065 | |
| 1066 | - The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL) |
Mark Hammond | c3de008 | 2002-12-03 06:16:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1067 | module (_ssl.pyd) |
Tim Peters | 19cf4ee | 2002-11-23 03:49:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1068 | |
Tim Peters | 857fb4c | 2002-11-14 23:31:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1069 | - The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it |
| 1070 | previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2). |
| 1071 | |
Tim Peters | 37dfb01 | 2002-11-11 19:51:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1072 | - When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now |
| 1073 | includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under |
| 1074 | MSVC 6, sys.version constains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is |
| 1075 | the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6. |
| 1076 | |
Tim Peters | 08e7295 | 2002-04-16 20:48:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1077 | - Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause |
| 1078 | of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in- |
| 1079 | use files" uninstall option). |
| 1080 | |
Guido van Rossum | 181e41a | 2002-04-06 00:23:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1081 | - Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031] |
| 1082 | |
Tim Peters | 3318792 | 2002-04-04 20:02:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1083 | - The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local |
| 1084 | equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install. |
| 1085 | |
Tim Peters | fb05db2 | 2002-03-11 00:24:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1086 | - file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values. |
| 1087 | It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a |
| 1088 | limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used). |
| 1089 | |
Tim Peters | ab034fa | 2002-02-01 11:27:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1090 | - os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block |
| 1091 | until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly |
| 1092 | the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for |
| 1093 | a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn() |
| 1094 | functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms. |
Tim Peters | 3318792 | 2002-04-04 20:02:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1095 | See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that |
| 1096 | spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on |
| 1097 | Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id). |
Tim Peters | ab034fa | 2002-02-01 11:27:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1098 | |
Tim Peters | 11bd994 | 2002-02-01 00:52:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1099 | - New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 21b23b0 | 2002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1100 | need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune |
Tim Peters | 11bd994 | 2002-02-01 00:52:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1101 | to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it |
| 1102 | got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the |
| 1103 | underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine. |
| 1104 | However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C |
| 1105 | level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were |
| 1106 | open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then |
| 1107 | doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's |
| 1108 | C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f |
| 1109 | blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow |
| 1110 | deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to |
| 1111 | work around. |
| 1112 | |
| 1113 | - The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the |
| 1114 | low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are |
| 1115 | O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL. |
| 1116 | The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT, |
| 1117 | O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary |
| 1118 | to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY |
| 1119 | (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless |
| 1120 | specified with O_CREAT too). |
| 1121 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1122 | Mac |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1123 | ---- |
| 1124 | |
Jack Jansen | ae3cb6c | 2002-12-23 11:25:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1125 | - Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here. |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1126 | |
Jack Jansen | ae3cb6c | 2002-12-23 11:25:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1127 | - The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython |
| 1128 | refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the |
| 1129 | CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX. |
| 1130 | |
| 1131 | - All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build, |
| 1132 | including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this |
| 1133 | will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot |
| 1134 | talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app |
| 1135 | bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script |
| 1136 | with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should |
| 1137 | be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including |
| 1138 | Tkinter or wxPython scripts). |
Tim Peters | bbc5d16 | 2003-01-02 16:02:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1139 | |
Jack Jansen | 8bb80db | 2002-12-30 22:42:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1140 | - Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in |
| 1141 | MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib |
| 1142 | are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc). |
Raymond Hettinger | af72d52 | 2002-12-29 20:14:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1143 | |
Jack Jansen | ae3cb6c | 2002-12-23 11:25:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1144 | - A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or |
| 1145 | .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are |
| 1146 | run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw |
| 1147 | files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal |
| 1148 | window, but all this can be customized. |
Raymond Hettinger | af72d52 | 2002-12-29 20:14:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1149 | |
Jack Jansen | ae3cb6c | 2002-12-23 11:25:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1150 | - MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and |
| 1151 | possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier |
| 1152 | releases. |
Raymond Hettinger | af72d52 | 2002-12-29 20:14:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1153 | |
Jack Jansen | ae3cb6c | 2002-12-23 11:25:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1154 | - Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command |
| 1155 | line interface too. |
Raymond Hettinger | af72d52 | 2002-12-29 20:14:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1156 | |
Jack Jansen | ae3cb6c | 2002-12-23 11:25:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1157 | - All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can |
| 1158 | subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should |
| 1159 | now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's |
| 1160 | documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still |
| 1161 | available for convenience. |
Raymond Hettinger | af72d52 | 2002-12-29 20:14:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1162 | |
Jack Jansen | ae3cb6c | 2002-12-23 11:25:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1163 | - New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h) |
| 1164 | and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is |
| 1165 | gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules. |
| 1166 | |
| 1167 | - Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses |
| 1168 | unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames |
| 1169 | (also when running on Mac OS X). |
Raymond Hettinger | af72d52 | 2002-12-29 20:14:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1170 | |
Jack Jansen | ae3cb6c | 2002-12-23 11:25:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1171 | - New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager. |
| 1172 | There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation |
| 1173 | (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer. |
| 1174 | See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a |
| 1175 | Help Viewer comaptible form and installing it. |
Raymond Hettinger | af72d52 | 2002-12-29 20:14:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1176 | |
Jack Jansen | ae3cb6c | 2002-12-23 11:25:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1177 | - OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now |
| 1178 | mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes. |
Raymond Hettinger | af72d52 | 2002-12-29 20:14:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1179 | |
Jack Jansen | ae3cb6c | 2002-12-23 11:25:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1180 | - MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file. |
| 1181 | This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278). |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1182 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1183 | What's New in Python 2.2 final? |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1184 | =============================== |
| 1185 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1186 | *Release date: 21-Dec-2001* |
| 1187 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1188 | Type/class unification and new-style classes |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1189 | -------------------------------------------- |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1190 | |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1191 | - pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes |
| 1192 | with a custom metaclass. |
| 1193 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1194 | Core and builtins |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1195 | ----------------- |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1196 | |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1197 | - weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both |
| 1198 | are proxies. |
| 1199 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1200 | Extension modules |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1201 | ----------------- |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1202 | |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1203 | - binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding |
| 1204 | very short strings. |
| 1205 | |
| 1206 | - cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack |
| 1207 | overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion |
| 1208 | limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects |
| 1209 | performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT |
| 1210 | when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h). |
| 1211 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1212 | Library |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1213 | ------- |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1214 | |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1215 | - dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at |
| 1216 | close or delete time). |
| 1217 | |
| 1218 | - rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None |
| 1219 | instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module). |
| 1220 | |
| 1221 | - xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles. |
| 1222 | |
| 1223 | - test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 21b23b0 | 2002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1224 | when run from the standard regression test. |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1225 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1226 | Tools/Demos |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1227 | ----------- |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1228 | |
| 1229 | Build |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1230 | ----- |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1231 | |
| 1232 | C API |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1233 | ----- |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1234 | |
| 1235 | New platforms |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1236 | ------------- |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1237 | |
| 1238 | Tests |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1239 | ----- |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1240 | |
| 1241 | Windows |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1242 | ------- |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1243 | |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1244 | - distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst). |
| 1245 | |
| 1246 | - tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper |
| 1247 | instances are deleted at process exit time. |
| 1248 | |
| 1249 | - socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are |
| 1250 | deleted at process exit time. |
| 1251 | |
| 1252 | - posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending |
| 1253 | in backslash. |
| 1254 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1255 | Mac |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1256 | ---- |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1257 | |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1258 | - The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers |
| 1259 | 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have |
| 1260 | been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX. |
| 1261 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1262 | |
Tim Peters | 6272dfd | 2001-12-13 19:34:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1263 | What's New in Python 2.2c1? |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1264 | =========================== |
| 1265 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1266 | *Release date: 14-Dec-2001* |
| 1267 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1268 | Type/class unification and new-style classes |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1269 | -------------------------------------------- |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1270 | |
Barry Warsaw | 0655745 | 2001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1271 | - Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has |
| 1272 | been extensively updated. See |
| 1273 | |
| 1274 | http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html |
| 1275 | |
| 1276 | That remains the primary documentation in this area. |
| 1277 | |
Guido van Rossum | 33bab01 | 2001-12-05 22:45:48 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1278 | - Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never |
| 1279 | deleted! |
| 1280 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4b80085 | 2001-12-03 00:54:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1281 | - The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called |
| 1282 | __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly |
| 1283 | called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition |
| 1284 | with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods |
| 1285 | are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.) |
| 1286 | |
Guido van Rossum | cdbbd0a | 2001-12-03 15:46:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1287 | - Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed: |
| 1288 | |
| 1289 | (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still |
| 1290 | return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super). |
| 1291 | |
| 1292 | (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This |
| 1293 | is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of |
| 1294 | super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data |
| 1295 | attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not |
| 1296 | supported anyway. |
| 1297 | |
| 1298 | (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an |
| 1299 | instance of the type used in creation of the super instance. |
| 1300 | |
Guido van Rossum | cd7b7d6 | 2001-12-04 21:02:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1301 | - Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type |
| 1302 | (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising |
| 1303 | TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling |
| 1304 | dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError |
| 1305 | (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__). |
Guido van Rossum | cdbbd0a | 2001-12-03 15:46:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1306 | |
Guido van Rossum | d331cb5 | 2001-12-05 19:46:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1307 | - New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for |
| 1308 | all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty |
| 1309 | dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further. |
| 1310 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1311 | Core and builtins |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1312 | ----------------- |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1313 | |
Tim Peters | 3caca23 | 2001-12-06 06:23:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1314 | - -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on |
| 1315 | the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead |
| 1316 | of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all" |
| 1317 | means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in |
| 1318 | your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in |
| 1319 | educational environments with control over the libraries in use. |
Tim Peters | bf72fe2 | 2001-12-11 21:43:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1320 | Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails |
| 1321 | under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true |
| 1322 | division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is |
| 1323 | testing the current rules). |
Tim Peters | 3caca23 | 2001-12-06 06:23:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1324 | |
Fred Drake | 6c01e25 | 2001-12-14 17:08:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1325 | - complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string |
| 1326 | argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string |
| 1327 | or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string. |
| 1328 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1329 | Extension modules |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1330 | ----------------- |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1331 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 560da62 | 2001-11-24 09:24:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1332 | - gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers. |
| 1333 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1334 | Library |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1335 | ------- |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1336 | |
Tim Peters | 25059d3 | 2001-12-07 20:35:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1337 | - Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter |
| 1338 | lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done |
| 1339 | this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling |
| 1340 | an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads |
| 1341 | until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs |
| 1342 | relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design. |
| 1343 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 3a89b2b | 2001-11-25 14:35:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1344 | - webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now. |
| 1345 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 652e191 | 2001-11-25 14:50:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1346 | - Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show. |
| 1347 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 714d2e2 | 2001-12-02 12:26:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1348 | - The charset alias windows_1252 has been added. |
| 1349 | |
Barry Warsaw | 0655745 | 2001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1350 | - types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types; |
| 1351 | usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled |
| 1352 | without Unicode support it will be just (str,). |
| 1353 | |
| 1354 | - The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML. |
| 1355 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1356 | Tools/Demos |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1357 | ----------- |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1358 | |
Barry Warsaw | 0655745 | 2001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1359 | - A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires |
| 1360 | off a search on Google. |
| 1361 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1362 | Build |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1363 | ----- |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1364 | |
Barry Warsaw | 0655745 | 2001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1365 | - Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the |
| 1366 | preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent). |
| 1367 | In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in |
| 1368 | Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension |
| 1369 | authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in |
| 1370 | release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to |
| 1371 | other platforms should do likewise. |
| 1372 | |
Jack Jansen | 1999ef4 | 2001-12-06 21:47:20 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1373 | - It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a |
| 1374 | case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build |
| 1375 | directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python. |
| 1376 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1377 | C API |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1378 | ----- |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1379 | |
Tim Peters | f582b82 | 2001-12-11 18:51:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1380 | - New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict |
| 1381 | constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object |
| 1382 | producing key-value pairs. |
| 1383 | |
Tim Peters | cffed4b | 2001-11-29 03:26:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1384 | - PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in |
Tim Peters | f582b82 | 2001-12-11 18:51:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1385 | the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This |
Tim Peters | cffed4b | 2001-11-29 03:26:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1386 | wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even |
| 1387 | dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result, |
| 1388 | PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that |
| 1389 | previously went unchallenged. |
| 1390 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1391 | New platforms |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1392 | ------------- |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1393 | |
| 1394 | Tests |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1395 | ----- |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1396 | |
| 1397 | Windows |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1398 | ------- |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1399 | |
| 1400 | Mac |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1401 | ---- |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1402 | |
Jack Jansen | ffa260f | 2001-12-06 21:14:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1403 | - In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin", |
| 1404 | without any trailing digits. |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1405 | |
Barry Warsaw | 0655745 | 2001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1406 | - Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons. |
| 1407 | Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to |
| 1408 | the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python |
| 1409 | home. |
| 1410 | |
| 1411 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1412 | What's New in Python 2.2b2? |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1413 | =========================== |
| 1414 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1415 | *Release date: 16-Nov-2001* |
| 1416 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1417 | Type/class unification and new-style classes |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1418 | -------------------------------------------- |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1419 | |
Guido van Rossum | 3d27df0 | 2001-11-15 20:27:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1420 | - Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the |
| 1421 | list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now: |
Tim Peters | 76f7fe3 | 2001-11-15 20:02:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1422 | |
| 1423 | class Classic: pass |
Guido van Rossum | 3d27df0 | 2001-11-15 20:27:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1424 | class Mixed(Classic, object): pass |
Tim Peters | 76f7fe3 | 2001-11-15 20:02:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1425 | |
| 1426 | The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected |
| 1427 | according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 21b23b0 | 2002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1428 | using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class. |
Tim Peters | 76f7fe3 | 2001-11-15 20:02:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1429 | This needs to be documented. |
| 1430 | |
Tim Peters | a427a2b | 2001-10-29 22:25:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1431 | - The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have |
| 1432 | been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage. |
| 1433 | |
Guido van Rossum | 3fc08d2 | 2001-11-15 20:33:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1434 | - dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For |
| 1435 | example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument, |
| 1436 | and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects. |
| 1437 | |
Guido van Rossum | 7ad2d1e | 2001-10-29 22:11:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1438 | - New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called |
| 1439 | when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes). |
| 1440 | |
Guido van Rossum | 12d955c | 2001-10-26 14:56:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1441 | - Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are |
| 1442 | instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base |
| 1443 | class forbids it). |
| 1444 | |
Guido van Rossum | c8e5645 | 2001-10-22 00:43:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1445 | - Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments |
| 1446 | (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods |
| 1447 | that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__. |
| 1448 | |
Guido van Rossum | 8644321 | 2001-10-27 22:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1449 | - The socket function has been converted to a type; see below. |
| 1450 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1451 | Core and builtins |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1452 | ----------------- |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1453 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 249aaed | 2001-11-09 21:06:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1454 | - Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This |
| 1455 | was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1" |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1456 | (see below) says. |
Jeremy Hylton | 249aaed | 2001-11-09 21:06:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1457 | |
Guido van Rossum | 12d955c | 2001-10-26 14:56:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1458 | - Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator |
| 1459 | (like 1 + ''). |
| 1460 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1461 | Extension modules |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1462 | ----------------- |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1463 | |
Tim Peters | 5ebfd36 | 2001-11-13 23:11:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1464 | - mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for |
| 1465 | both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and |
| 1466 | copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on |
| 1467 | Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 21b23b0 | 2002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1468 | uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across |
Tim Peters | 5ebfd36 | 2001-11-13 23:11:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1469 | platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this! |
| 1470 | |
Tim Peters | 169ded0 | 2001-11-03 19:57:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1471 | - By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in |
| 1472 | unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all |
| 1473 | instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized |
| 1474 | to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes. |
| 1475 | |
Guido van Rossum | 12d955c | 2001-10-26 14:56:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1476 | - The socket module defines a new method for socket objects, |
| 1477 | sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to |
Guido van Rossum | 8644321 | 2001-10-27 22:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1478 | send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has |
| 1479 | been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.) |
| 1480 | before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing. |
Guido van Rossum | 12d955c | 2001-10-26 14:56:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1481 | |
| 1482 | - Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite |
| 1483 | for the curses module (you have to run it manually). |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 15e0353 | 2001-10-22 16:37:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1484 | |
Guido van Rossum | 692adf1 | 2001-10-30 03:03:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1485 | - binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57 |
| 1486 | bytes on its input. |
| 1487 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1488 | Library |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1489 | ------- |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1490 | |
Tim Peters | 5ebfd36 | 2001-11-13 23:11:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1491 | - tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory |
Martin v. Löwis | 25ee87c | 2001-11-07 22:38:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1492 | convenience function. |
| 1493 | |
Tim Peters | 7533587 | 2001-11-03 19:35:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1494 | - Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For |
| 1495 | example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a |
| 1496 | single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously. |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1497 | Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time; |
| 1498 | previously, the error went undetected, and results were |
| 1499 | unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and |
| 1500 | pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an |
| 1501 | experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works |
| 1502 | like findall() but returns an iterator. |
Tim Peters | 7533587 | 2001-11-03 19:35:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1503 | |
Martin v. Löwis | b7b3260 | 2001-11-02 23:48:20 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1504 | - Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox, |
| 1505 | DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the |
| 1506 | methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog, |
| 1507 | tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions. |
| 1508 | |
Tim Peters | 98791af | 2001-10-23 01:59:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1509 | - Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so |
| 1510 | cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause |
| 1511 | permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled). |
| 1512 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4919214 | 2001-10-24 20:51:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1513 | - os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the |
| 1514 | separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except |
| 1515 | RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable |
| 1516 | unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS. |
| 1517 | |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1518 | - mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly |
| 1519 | found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1520 | optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1521 | recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we |
| 1522 | know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are |
| 1523 | new -l and -e options. |
| 1524 | |
| 1525 | - statcache is now deprecated. |
| 1526 | |
| 1527 | - email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style |
| 1528 | dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1529 | hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1530 | added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings |
| 1531 | time properly taken into account. |
| 1532 | |
| 1533 | - In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by |
| 1534 | transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception |
| 1535 | propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__ |
| 1536 | in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle. |
| 1537 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1538 | Tools/Demos |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1539 | ----------- |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1540 | |
| 1541 | Build |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1542 | ----- |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1543 | |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1544 | - The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module |
| 1545 | is built with libdb3 if available. |
| 1546 | |
| 1547 | - Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement. |
| 1548 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1549 | C API |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1550 | ----- |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1551 | |
Tim Peters | 1fc240e | 2001-10-26 05:06:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1552 | - New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non- |
| 1553 | NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling |
| 1554 | PySequence_Size(). |
| 1555 | |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1556 | - New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added. |
| 1557 | |
| 1558 | - New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and |
| 1559 | PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more |
| 1560 | convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C. |
| 1561 | |
| 1562 | - PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's |
| 1563 | possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before. |
| 1564 | |
| 1565 | - New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its |
| 1566 | argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface. |
| 1567 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1568 | New platforms |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1569 | ------------- |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1570 | |
Guido van Rossum | 8644321 | 2001-10-27 22:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1571 | - We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00, |
| 1572 | *with* threads, and passes the test suite. |
| 1573 | |
Tim Peters | 7a33d8b | 2001-11-05 02:51:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1574 | - Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build |
| 1575 | again under OS/2 Visual Age C++. |
| 1576 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4919214 | 2001-10-24 20:51:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1577 | - Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger. |
| 1578 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1579 | Tests |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1580 | ----- |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1581 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 15e0353 | 2001-10-22 16:37:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1582 | - Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically; |
| 1583 | regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it. |
| 1584 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1585 | Windows |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1586 | ------- |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1587 | |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1588 | Mac |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1589 | ---- |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1590 | |
| 1591 | - PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be |
| 1592 | removed completely in the next release. |
| 1593 | |
| 1594 | - It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and |
| 1595 | OSX. |
| 1596 | |
| 1597 | - The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side |
| 1598 | result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII. |
| 1599 | |
| 1600 | - Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1 |
| 1601 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1602 | |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1603 | What's New in Python 2.2b1? |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1604 | =========================== |
| 1605 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1606 | *Release date: 19-Oct-2001* |
| 1607 | |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1608 | Type/class unification and new-style classes |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1609 | -------------------------------------------- |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1610 | |
Guido van Rossum | 687ae00 | 2001-10-15 22:03:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1611 | - New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and |
Guido van Rossum | 3eea25c | 2001-10-16 00:46:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1612 | extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I |
Guido van Rossum | 687ae00 | 2001-10-15 22:03:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1613 | no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic |
Guido van Rossum | 3eea25c | 2001-10-16 00:46:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1614 | remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you |
| 1615 | must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the |
Guido van Rossum | 687ae00 | 2001-10-15 22:03:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1616 | __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack |
| 1617 | of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the |
Guido van Rossum | 3eea25c | 2001-10-16 00:46:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1618 | future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I |
| 1619 | can prove that it actually speeds things up). |
Guido van Rossum | 50fda3b | 2001-10-04 19:46:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1620 | |
Tim Peters | 1c9ca87 | 2001-10-04 06:43:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1621 | - C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it |
| 1622 | always returned None, even when there was a class docstring). |
| 1623 | |
| 1624 | - doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes, |
| 1625 | class methods, static methods, and properties. |
| 1626 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9074ef6 | 2001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1627 | Core and builtins |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1628 | ----------------- |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1629 | |
Guido van Rossum | a8bcf80 | 2001-10-15 15:53:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1630 | - A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed. |
| 1631 | For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in |
| 1632 | this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a' |
| 1633 | iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce', |
| 1634 | 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be', |
| 1635 | 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error. |
| 1636 | Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say |
| 1637 | [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost. |
| 1638 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9074ef6 | 2001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1639 | - getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as |
| 1640 | documented, rather than returning the default value for all |
| 1641 | exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for |
| 1642 | example). |
| 1643 | |
Fred Drake | cb7a6b5 | 2001-10-22 18:41:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1644 | - Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API. |
Fred Drake | 934d2a4 | 2001-10-18 18:18:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1645 | A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 51c1816 | 2001-10-22 01:47:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1646 | proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a |
Barry Warsaw | f6fb171 | 2001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1647 | built-in exception. |
Fred Drake | 934d2a4 | 2001-10-18 18:18:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1648 | |
Guido van Rossum | 1c48609 | 2001-10-19 02:05:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1649 | - unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary |
| 1650 | objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists. |
| 1651 | unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still |
Marc-André Lemburg | b5507ec | 2001-10-19 12:02:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1652 | require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument. |
Guido van Rossum | 1c48609 | 2001-10-19 02:05:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1653 | |
Barry Warsaw | f6fb171 | 2001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1654 | - isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a |
| 1655 | class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the |
| 1656 | second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a |
| 1657 | class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance() |
| 1658 | will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the |
| 1659 | things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g. |
| 1660 | |
| 1661 | isinstance(x, (A, B)) |
| 1662 | |
| 1663 | returns true if x is an instance of A or B. |
| 1664 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9074ef6 | 2001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1665 | Extension modules |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1666 | ----------------- |
Guido van Rossum | 9074ef6 | 2001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1667 | |
| 1668 | - thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None). |
| 1669 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 16dc7f4 | 2001-09-30 20:32:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1670 | - binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp. |
| 1671 | |
Guido van Rossum | c524d95 | 2001-10-19 01:31:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1672 | - readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the |
| 1673 | pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function. |
Martin v. Löwis | 0daad59 | 2001-09-30 21:09:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1674 | |
Guido van Rossum | c524d95 | 2001-10-19 01:31:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1675 | - os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where |
| 1676 | available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions |
| 1677 | now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be |
| 1678 | accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for |
| 1679 | backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence. |
| 1680 | Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as |
Guido van Rossum | 98bf58f | 2001-10-18 20:34:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1681 | attributes. |
| 1682 | |
| 1683 | - time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a |
| 1684 | pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with |
| 1685 | attributes like tm_year etc. |
Martin v. Löwis | 16628c9 | 2001-10-04 22:46:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1686 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9074ef6 | 2001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1687 | - Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional |
| 1688 | second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount |
| 1689 | of memory to use for the uncompressed data. |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1690 | |
Jeremy Hylton | cb44143 | 2001-10-19 03:40:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1691 | - optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL |
| 1692 | functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls |
| 1693 | are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not |
Barry Warsaw | f6fb171 | 2001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1694 | automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile |
| 1695 | arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional. |
| 1696 | |
| 1697 | - posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now |
| 1698 | exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW. |
Jeremy Hylton | cb44143 | 2001-10-19 03:40:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1699 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9074ef6 | 2001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1700 | Library |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1701 | ------- |
Guido van Rossum | 3c28863 | 2001-10-16 21:13:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1702 | |
Tim Peters | 7402f79 | 2001-10-02 03:53:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1703 | - doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module |
| 1704 | being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg. |
| 1705 | |
Fred Drake | cb7a6b5 | 2001-10-22 18:41:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1706 | - HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has |
| 1707 | been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling, |
| 1708 | but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and |
| 1709 | documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final). |
| 1710 | |
Guido van Rossum | c4b09b4 | 2001-10-04 10:19:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1711 | - profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception |
| 1712 | raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used |
| 1713 | to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive |
| 1714 | functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function. |
| 1715 | |
Tim Peters | 0a1fc4e | 2001-10-07 03:12:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1716 | The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile |
| 1717 | profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if |
| 1718 | you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile |
| 1719 | intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more |
| 1720 | than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended |
| 1721 | to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and |
| 1722 | that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but |
| 1723 | without losing information). |
| 1724 | |
Tim Peters | cce092d | 2001-10-09 05:31:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1725 | - Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver |
Tim Peters | 659a603 | 2001-10-09 20:51:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1726 | a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can |
| 1727 | now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or |
| 1728 | instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code. |
| 1729 | Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile |
| 1730 | module). |
| 1731 | |
| 1732 | Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overriden by subclasses. |
| 1733 | Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of |
| 1734 | profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details |
| 1735 | and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed |
| 1736 | a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines. |
Tim Peters | cce092d | 2001-10-09 05:31:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1737 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 16dc7f4 | 2001-09-30 20:32:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1738 | - quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter, |
Jeremy Hylton | 6f543b6 | 2001-10-16 20:42:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1739 | which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q' |
| 1740 | encoding. |
| 1741 | |
Guido van Rossum | a5343cc | 2001-10-18 18:02:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1742 | - The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after |
| 1743 | finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.) |
| 1744 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1745 | - The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument |
Barry Warsaw | f6fb171 | 2001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1746 | to allow saving the message body to a file. |
| 1747 | |
| 1748 | - The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which |
| 1749 | only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body. |
| 1750 | Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing |
| 1751 | audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter). |
| 1752 | |
| 1753 | - ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB. |
| 1754 | |
| 1755 | - ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO, |
| 1756 | ON, and OFF. |
| 1757 | |
Fred Drake | cb7a6b5 | 2001-10-22 18:41:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1758 | - xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute |
| 1759 | and item() method as required by the DOM specifications. |
| 1760 | |
Guido van Rossum | ed554f6 | 2001-10-02 23:15:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1761 | Tools/Demos |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1762 | ----------- |
Guido van Rossum | ed554f6 | 2001-10-02 23:15:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1763 | |
| 1764 | - Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package |
| 1765 | derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see |
| 1766 | http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net. |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1767 | |
Barry Warsaw | f6fb171 | 2001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1768 | - The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have |
| 1769 | been added: -X and -E. |
| 1770 | |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1771 | Build |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1772 | ----- |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1773 | |
Barry Warsaw | f6fb171 | 2001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1774 | - configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and |
| 1775 | the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler. |
| 1776 | |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1777 | C API |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1778 | ----- |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1779 | |
Guido van Rossum | 6c4bce3 | 2001-10-18 19:20:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1780 | - The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that |
| 1781 | the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is |
| 1782 | not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in |
| 1783 | Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for |
| 1784 | "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return. |
| 1785 | |
Tim Peters | d38b1c7 | 2001-09-30 05:09:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1786 | - PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments. |
| 1787 | Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well |
| 1788 | as long) arguments. |
| 1789 | |
Guido van Rossum | 3c28863 | 2001-10-16 21:13:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1790 | - PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread |
| 1791 | ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no |
| 1792 | thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only |
| 1793 | the thread module used this API). This code has only really been |
| 1794 | tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and |
| 1795 | report any bugs or strange behavior). |
| 1796 | |
Guido van Rossum | 1c48609 | 2001-10-19 02:05:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1797 | - PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as |
| 1798 | input. |
| 1799 | |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1800 | New platforms |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1801 | ------------- |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1802 | |
| 1803 | Tests |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1804 | ----- |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1805 | |
| 1806 | Windows |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1807 | ------- |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1808 | |
Tim Peters | 04cf1d3 | 2001-10-09 22:39:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1809 | - Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension |
| 1810 | registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry |
| 1811 | is created for .py and .pyw files. |
| 1812 | |
Tim Peters | 1ce3cf7 | 2001-10-01 17:58:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1813 | - The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven |
| 1814 | Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK |
| 1815 | action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via |
Skip Montanaro | a2a07bc | 2002-09-30 15:23:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1816 | signal.signal(). For example:: |
Tim Peters | 1ce3cf7 | 2001-10-01 17:58:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1817 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1818 | # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C |
| 1819 | # (SIGINT) behavior. |
| 1820 | import signal |
| 1821 | signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler) |
Tim Peters | 1ce3cf7 | 2001-10-01 17:58:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1822 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1823 | try: |
Raymond Hettinger | af72d52 | 2002-12-29 20:14:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1824 | while 1: |
| 1825 | pass |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1826 | except KeyboardInterrupt: |
Raymond Hettinger | af72d52 | 2002-12-29 20:14:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1827 | # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed |
| 1828 | # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the |
| 1829 | # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup). |
| 1830 | print "Clean exit" |
Tim Peters | 1ce3cf7 | 2001-10-01 17:58:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1831 | |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1832 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1833 | What's New in Python 2.2a4? |
| 1834 | =========================== |
| 1835 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1836 | *Release date: 28-Sep-2001* |
| 1837 | |
Guido van Rossum | 808eea7 | 2001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1838 | Type/class unification and new-style classes |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1839 | -------------------------------------------- |
Guido van Rossum | 808eea7 | 2001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1840 | |
| 1841 | - pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes; |
| 1842 | e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper |
| 1843 | documentation for all operations on list objects. |
| 1844 | |
| 1845 | - Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely |
| 1846 | be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with |
| 1847 | Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass |
| 1848 | examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work |
| 1849 | with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write |
| 1850 | webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug |
| 1851 | report on SourceForge.) |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1852 | |
Tim Peters | 66c1a52 | 2001-09-24 21:17:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1853 | - property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc. |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 21b23b0 | 2002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1854 | These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__' |
Tim Peters | 66c1a52 | 2001-09-24 21:17:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1855 | in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't |
| 1856 | discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to |
| 1857 | associate a docstring with a property. |
| 1858 | |
Guido van Rossum | 808eea7 | 2001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1859 | - Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For |
| 1860 | example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str |
| 1861 | instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most |
| 1862 | other built-in object types. |
| 1863 | |
| 1864 | - The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type |
| 1865 | 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>, |
| 1866 | *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type |
| 1867 | 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or |
| 1868 | otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects). |
| 1869 | |
| 1870 | - The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>; |
| 1871 | previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>. |
| 1872 | |
| 1873 | - For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now |
| 1874 | called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 51c1816 | 2001-10-22 01:47:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1875 | *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the |
Guido van Rossum | 808eea7 | 2001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1876 | one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular |
| 1877 | attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute |
| 1878 | access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If |
| 1879 | both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises |
| 1880 | AttributeError, __getattr__ is called. |
| 1881 | |
| 1882 | - The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to. |
| 1883 | The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old |
| 1884 | class. |
| 1885 | |
| 1886 | - The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern, |
| 1887 | "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin |
| 1888 | constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function. |
| 1889 | file() is now the preferred way to open a file. |
| 1890 | |
| 1891 | - Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to |
| 1892 | the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential |
| 1893 | and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so |
| 1894 | now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments. |
| 1895 | |
| 1896 | - Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or |
| 1897 | unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired. |
| 1898 | |
| 1899 | - Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an |
| 1900 | immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode), |
| 1901 | where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the |
| 1902 | operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that |
| 1903 | instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 21b23b0 | 2002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1904 | a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str |
Guido van Rossum | 808eea7 | 2001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1905 | with the same value as s. |
| 1906 | |
Barry Warsaw | 86fbaf8 | 2001-09-28 15:26:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1907 | - Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added. |
| 1908 | |
Guido van Rossum | 808eea7 | 2001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1909 | Core |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1910 | ---- |
Guido van Rossum | 808eea7 | 2001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1911 | |
Tim Peters | 2c9aa5e | 2001-09-23 04:06:05 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1912 | - file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings. |
| 1913 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | aefd766 | 2001-09-20 12:59:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1914 | - PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like |
| 1915 | PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str |
| 1916 | on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This |
| 1917 | makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer |
| 1918 | objects. |
| 1919 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 51c1816 | 2001-10-22 01:47:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1920 | - PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write |
| 1921 | method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target |
Martin v. Löwis | 2777c02 | 2001-09-19 13:47:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1922 | of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must |
| 1923 | at least convert them into ASCII strings. |
| 1924 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1925 | - Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer |
| 1926 | necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order |
| 1927 | to let other runnable threads be scheduled. |
| 1928 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1929 | Library |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1930 | ------- |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1931 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | bf99017 | 2001-09-27 14:17:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1932 | - StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support |
| 1933 | read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods. |
| 1934 | These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such |
| 1935 | by the instances. |
| 1936 | |
Barry Warsaw | 2f60073 | 2001-09-24 04:28:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1937 | - The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the |
| 1938 | mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes |
| 1939 | and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators. |
| 1940 | |
Tim Peters | 8a9c284 | 2001-09-22 21:30:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1941 | - difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This |
| 1942 | restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output |
| 1943 | before the entire comparison is complete. |
| 1944 | |
Barry Warsaw | 58b072d | 2001-09-22 04:44:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1945 | - StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support |
| 1946 | iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is |
| 1947 | called for each iteration until it returns an empty string). |
| 1948 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 494f2ae | 2001-09-19 11:33:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1949 | - The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access |
| 1950 | builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(), |
| 1951 | getwriter(). |
| 1952 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1953 | - SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer) |
| 1954 | simplifies writing XML RPC servers. |
| 1955 | |
Barry Warsaw | 647d5e8 | 2001-09-28 17:01:02 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1956 | - os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1957 | after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this |
| 1958 | is an alias for os.path.abspath(). |
| 1959 | |
Tim Peters | 16a77ad | 2001-09-08 04:00:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1960 | - operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any |
| 1961 | iterable object. |
| 1962 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1963 | - smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of |
| 1964 | the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods. |
Guido van Rossum | d8185ca | 2001-09-14 16:35:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1965 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1966 | - hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message |
| 1967 | authentication. |
| 1968 | |
| 1969 | - mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the |
| 1970 | same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed. |
Guido van Rossum | d8185ca | 2001-09-14 16:35:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1971 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1972 | - The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of |
Guido van Rossum | c9ed5dc | 2001-09-20 05:30:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1973 | Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a |
| 1974 | Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as |
| 1975 | a sample driver.) |
| 1976 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1977 | Build |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1978 | ----- |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1979 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1980 | - Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports |
| 1981 | it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at |
| 1982 | least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large |
| 1983 | files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is |
| 1984 | still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your |
| 1985 | kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose |
| 1986 | kernel has large file support. |
| 1987 | |
| 1988 | - The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a |
| 1989 | cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied |
| 1990 | values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works |
| 1991 | flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of |
| 1992 | autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN). |
| 1993 | |
| 1994 | - The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser |
| 1995 | generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when |
| 1996 | using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py. |
| 1997 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1998 | C API |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1999 | ----- |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2000 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2001 | - The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read |
| 2002 | and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode. |
| 2003 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2004 | New platforms |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2005 | ------------- |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2006 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2007 | - Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution |
| 2008 | (http://familiar.handhelds.org). |
| 2009 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2010 | Tests |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2011 | ----- |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2012 | |
Tim Peters | 8a9c284 | 2001-09-22 21:30:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2013 | - The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to |
| 2014 | an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at |
| 2015 | the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a |
| 2016 | variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences. |
| 2017 | This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting. |
| 2018 | |
| 2019 | - The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main() |
| 2020 | convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being |
| 2021 | imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and |
| 2022 | flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework. |
| 2023 | |
| 2024 | - regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now, |
| 2025 | especially in regard to reporting errors. |
| 2026 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2027 | Windows |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2028 | ------- |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2029 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2030 | - Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems |
Tim Peters | 8a9c284 | 2001-09-22 21:30:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2031 | that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in |
| 2032 | Python 2.2a3" for more detail. |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2033 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2034 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2035 | What's New in Python 2.2a3? |
| 2036 | =========================== |
| 2037 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2038 | *Release Date: 07-Sep-2001* |
| 2039 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2040 | Core |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2041 | ---- |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2042 | |
Tim Peters | 9fffa3e | 2001-09-04 05:14:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2043 | - Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too |
| 2044 | big to represent as a C double. |
| 2045 | |
Tim Peters | 32f453e | 2001-09-03 08:35:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2046 | - The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument |
| 2047 | if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of |
| 2048 | integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case |
| 2049 | the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same |
| 2050 | restriction). |
| 2051 | |
Tim Peters | 5d2b77c | 2001-09-03 05:47:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2052 | - The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much |
| 2053 | more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes |
| 2054 | reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base |
| 2055 | classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned |
| 2056 | an empty list. In 2.2a3, |
| 2057 | |
| 2058 | >>> dir([]) |
| 2059 | ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', |
| 2060 | '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__', |
| 2061 | '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__', |
| 2062 | '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__', |
| 2063 | '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__', |
| 2064 | 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', |
| 2065 | 'reverse', 'sort'] |
| 2066 | |
| 2067 | dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though. |
| 2068 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2069 | - Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2070 | than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP |
| 2071 | 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for |
| 2072 | this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old |
| 2073 | OverflowError exception. |
| 2074 | |
Guido van Rossum | 61c345f | 2001-09-04 03:26:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2075 | - A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2076 | warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible |
Barry Warsaw | d6c8ca6 | 2001-09-07 18:13:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2077 | values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is |
| 2078 | -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no |
| 2079 | warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about |
| 2080 | all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall |
| 2081 | also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments |
Tim Peters | 3caca23 | 2001-12-06 06:23:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2082 | (for use with fixdiv.py). |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2083 | [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became |
| 2084 | obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] :: |
| 2085 | |
| 2086 | Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but |
| 2087 | only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or |
| 2088 | -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and |
| 2089 | warns about classic division everywhere else. |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2090 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2091 | - Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int, |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2092 | long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and |
| 2093 | dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.) |
| 2094 | Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in |
| 2095 | types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading |
| 2096 | __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances |
| 2097 | will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value" |
| 2098 | (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance |
| 2099 | once it is created. |
| 2100 | |
Guido van Rossum | aaf80c8 | 2001-09-02 13:44:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2101 | - The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a |
| 2102 | mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its |
| 2103 | (key, value) pairs. |
| 2104 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2105 | - A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2106 | "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an |
| 2107 | explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation |
| 2108 | |
Guido van Rossum | 8d7234d | 2001-09-06 22:02:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2109 | - A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the |
| 2110 | creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by |
| 2111 | getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or |
| 2112 | write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__. |
| 2113 | See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2114 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2115 | - The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been |
Tim Peters | d507dab | 2001-08-30 20:51:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2116 | liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now |
| 2117 | legal that were SyntaxErrors before: |
| 2118 | |
| 2119 | 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008. |
| 2120 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2121 | - An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete |
Tim Peters | c6d9581 | 2001-08-28 20:56:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2122 | exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError. |
| 2123 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2124 | Library |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2125 | ------- |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2126 | |
Martin v. Löwis | cb227c9 | 2001-09-06 08:54:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2127 | - telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for |
Martin v. Löwis | 1da9c57 | 2002-11-04 09:56:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2128 | setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing |
| 2129 | of suboptions. |
Martin v. Löwis | cb227c9 | 2001-09-06 08:54:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2130 | |
Tim Peters | a40c793 | 2001-09-05 22:36:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2131 | - The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to |
| 2132 | ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new |
| 2133 | freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow- |
| 2134 | checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all |
| 2135 | platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable |
| 2136 | in this area anymore). |
| 2137 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 44f8696 | 2001-09-05 13:44:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2138 | - Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class |
| 2139 | threading.Timer. |
| 2140 | |
Tim Peters | 7852616 | 2001-09-05 00:53:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2141 | - math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge |
| 2142 | long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0. |
| 2143 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2144 | - A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is |
Tim Peters | 6923234 | 2001-08-30 05:16:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2145 | currently held. See the docs for the imp module. |
| 2146 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2147 | - pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read |
Tim Peters | 8211237 | 2001-08-29 02:28:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2148 | dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes. |
| 2149 | When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are |
| 2150 | converted to Python longs. |
| 2151 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2152 | - In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2153 | code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole. |
| 2154 | |
Steve Purcell | 6091cd6 | 2001-09-06 16:05:17 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2155 | - unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks |
| 2156 | generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references |
| 2157 | to objects that should be garbage collected between tests. |
| 2158 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2159 | Tools |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2160 | ----- |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2161 | |
Barry Warsaw | d6c8ca6 | 2001-09-07 18:13:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2162 | - Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix |
| 2163 | division operators as per PEP 238. |
| 2164 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2165 | Build |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2166 | ----- |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2167 | |
Barry Warsaw | d6c8ca6 | 2001-09-07 18:13:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2168 | - If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at |
| 2169 | Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac |
| 2170 | application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa. |
| 2171 | Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please. |
| 2172 | |
Tim Peters | 7eea37e | 2001-09-04 22:08:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2173 | C API |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2174 | ----- |
Tim Peters | 7eea37e | 2001-09-04 22:08:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2175 | |
| 2176 | - New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj). |
Tim Peters | 6923234 | 2001-08-30 05:16:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2177 | |
Tim Peters | 9fffa3e | 2001-09-04 05:14:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2178 | - Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no |
| 2179 | callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow |
Skip Montanaro | a2a07bc | 2002-09-30 15:23:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2180 | errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check:: |
Tim Peters | 9fffa3e | 2001-09-04 05:14:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2181 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2182 | double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object); |
| 2183 | if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) { |
Raymond Hettinger | af72d52 | 2002-12-29 20:14:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2184 | /* The conversion failed. */ |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2185 | } |
Tim Peters | 9fffa3e | 2001-09-04 05:14:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2186 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2187 | - The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still |
Neil Schemenauer | 4042c69 | 2001-08-30 15:38:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2188 | compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension |
| 2189 | module: |
| 2190 | |
| 2191 | - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC |
Tim Peters | d507dab | 2001-08-30 20:51:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2192 | |
Neil Schemenauer | 4042c69 | 2001-08-30 15:38:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2193 | - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and |
| 2194 | PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them |
Tim Peters | d507dab | 2001-08-30 20:51:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2195 | |
Neil Schemenauer | 4042c69 | 2001-08-30 15:38:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2196 | - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini |
| 2197 | to PyObject_GC_UnTrack |
Tim Peters | d507dab | 2001-08-30 20:51:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2198 | |
Neil Schemenauer | 4042c69 | 2001-08-30 15:38:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2199 | - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations |
| 2200 | |
| 2201 | - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC |
| 2202 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2203 | - Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV(). |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2204 | These can be used safely to construct string objects from a |
| 2205 | sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported |
| 2206 | by PyErr_Format()). |
Tim Peters | 6923234 | 2001-08-30 05:16:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2207 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2208 | New platforms |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2209 | ------------- |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2210 | |
Tim Peters | b7da090 | 2001-09-02 23:01:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2211 | - Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile |
| 2212 | under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran |
| 2213 | out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError |
| 2214 | when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and |
| 2215 | causing later failures too. |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2216 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2217 | Tests |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2218 | ----- |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2219 | |
| 2220 | Windows |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2221 | ------- |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2222 | |
Tim Peters | 6e13a56 | 2001-09-06 00:32:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2223 | - Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on |
| 2224 | Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek() |
| 2225 | to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough |
| 2226 | disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large |
Tim Peters | 9a9471c | 2001-09-11 23:18:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2227 | partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte) |
| 2228 | filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there. |
| 2229 | FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now. |
| 2230 | NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be |
| 2231 | used from Python now. |
Tim Peters | 6e13a56 | 2001-09-06 00:32:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2232 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2233 | - The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC |
Tim Peters | 402d598 | 2001-08-27 06:37:48 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2234 | points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan). |
| 2235 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2236 | |
Tim Peters | 20f51a7 | 2001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2237 | What's New in Python 2.2a2? |
| 2238 | =========================== |
| 2239 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2240 | *Release Date: 22-Aug-2001* |
| 2241 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 339d0f7 | 2001-08-17 18:39:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2242 | Build |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2243 | ----- |
Martin v. Löwis | 339d0f7 | 2001-08-17 18:39:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2244 | |
Barry Warsaw | 18b2ecf | 2001-08-22 20:26:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2245 | - Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1, |
| 2246 | generously donated to us by Wise Solutions. |
| 2247 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 339d0f7 | 2001-08-17 18:39:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2248 | - configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values |
| 2249 | ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode |
| 2250 | type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter. |
Barry Warsaw | 6f3410d | 2001-08-22 04:08:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2251 | |
Jack Jansen | 32ce0cd | 2001-08-21 19:28:20 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2252 | - A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework, |
| 2253 | which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting |
| 2254 | point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org |
| 2255 | if you are interested in helping. |
Martin v. Löwis | 339d0f7 | 2001-08-17 18:39:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2256 | |
Barry Warsaw | 6f3410d | 2001-08-22 04:08:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2257 | - The NeXT platform is no longer supported. |
| 2258 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2259 | - The 'new' module is now statically linked. |
Barry Warsaw | 6f3410d | 2001-08-22 04:08:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2260 | |
Tim Peters | 0afb609 | 2001-08-15 06:06:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2261 | Tools |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2262 | ----- |
Tim Peters | 0afb609 | 2001-08-15 06:06:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2263 | |
| 2264 | - The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically |
Andrew M. Kuchling | b053209 | 2001-08-15 15:54:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2265 | edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See |
Tim Peters | 0afb609 | 2001-08-15 06:06:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2266 | the module docstring for details. |
| 2267 | |
Tim Peters | 20f51a7 | 2001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2268 | Tests |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2269 | ----- |
Tim Peters | 20f51a7 | 2001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2270 | |
Tim Peters | 5e824c3 | 2001-08-12 22:25:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2271 | - regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some |
Barry Warsaw | 6f3410d | 2001-08-22 04:08:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2272 | platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest |
| 2273 | also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests |
| 2274 | which require network access or consume significant disk resources. |
Tim Peters | 5e824c3 | 2001-08-12 22:25:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2275 | |
Tim Peters | 20f51a7 | 2001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2276 | - Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to |
| 2277 | Nick Mathewson. |
| 2278 | |
| 2279 | Core |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2280 | ---- |
Tim Peters | 20f51a7 | 2001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2281 | |
Barry Warsaw | 6f3410d | 2001-08-22 04:08:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2282 | - The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP |
| 2283 | 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until |
| 2284 | Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in |
| 2285 | which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator |
| 2286 | module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented |
| 2287 | assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable |
| 2288 | methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion: |
| 2289 | <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html> |
| 2290 | |
Tim Peters | 6cd6a82 | 2001-08-17 22:11:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2291 | - Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells |
| 2292 | (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael |
| 2293 | Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full |
| 2294 | details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>. |
| 2295 | |
Guido van Rossum | f86ddd2 | 2001-08-17 21:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2296 | - The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the |
| 2297 | trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of |
| 2298 | some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing |
| 2299 | bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to |
| 2300 | come a long way). |
| 2301 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 888fac0 | 2001-07-31 14:24:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2302 | - Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import |
| 2303 | now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to |
| 2304 | write filters for these warnings). |
| 2305 | |
Barry Warsaw | 9b3be7f | 2001-08-14 18:35:02 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2306 | - A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a |
| 2307 | dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None, |
| 2308 | but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it |
| 2309 | to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes |
| 2310 | have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None. |
| 2311 | |
Guido van Rossum | 32aa5d2 | 2001-09-05 18:43:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2312 | - A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of |
| 2313 | all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically |
| 2314 | significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with |
| 2315 | "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if |
| 2316 | the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an |
| 2317 | older distribution. |
| 2318 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | d627791 | 2001-07-31 14:42:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2319 | Library |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2320 | ------- |
Marc-André Lemburg | d627791 | 2001-07-31 14:42:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2321 | |
Tim Peters | 5e824c3 | 2001-08-12 22:25:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2322 | - New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py. |
| 2323 | These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py, |
Tim Peters | 0afb609 | 2001-08-15 06:06:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2324 | for programmatic reuse. |
Tim Peters | 5e824c3 | 2001-08-12 22:25:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2325 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | d627791 | 2001-07-31 14:42:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2326 | - New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute |
| 2327 | value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more |
| 2328 | reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values. |
| 2329 | |
| 2330 | - Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added. |
| 2331 | |
Barry Warsaw | 6f3410d | 2001-08-22 04:08:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2332 | - Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings. |
| 2333 | |
| 2334 | - Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore() |
| 2335 | |
| 2336 | - Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module. |
| 2337 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2338 | - The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags. |
Barry Warsaw | 6f3410d | 2001-08-22 04:08:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2339 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 560da62 | 2001-11-24 09:24:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2340 | - The gc module offers the get_referents function. |
| 2341 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | d627791 | 2001-07-31 14:42:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2342 | New platforms |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2343 | ------------- |
Marc-André Lemburg | d627791 | 2001-07-31 14:42:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2344 | |
| 2345 | C API |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2346 | ----- |
Marc-André Lemburg | d627791 | 2001-07-31 14:42:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2347 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 888fac0 | 2001-07-31 14:24:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2348 | - Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added |
| 2349 | which provide a cross-platform implementations for the |
| 2350 | relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to |
| 2351 | the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions |
| 2352 | apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection |
| 2353 | against buffer overruns. |
| 2354 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 48dbfe9 | 2001-07-31 14:37:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2355 | - Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters |
Tim Peters | c173137 | 2001-08-04 08:12:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2356 | and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to |
| 2357 | impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension |
Marc-André Lemburg | 48dbfe9 | 2001-07-31 14:37:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2358 | will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make |
| 2359 | sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by |
| 2360 | using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension. |
| 2361 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 339d0f7 | 2001-08-17 18:39:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2362 | - Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition |
| 2363 | tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a |
| 2364 | single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than |
| 2365 | calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now |
| 2366 | deprecated. |
| 2367 | |
Tim Peters | c173137 | 2001-08-04 08:12:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2368 | Windows |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2369 | ------- |
Tim Peters | c173137 | 2001-08-04 08:12:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2370 | |
| 2371 | - "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else |
| 2372 | relevant is found. |
| 2373 | |
Tim Peters | 20f51a7 | 2001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2374 | |
Guido van Rossum | 55a7899 | 2001-07-17 17:22:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2375 | What's New in Python 2.2a1? |
Tim Peters | f553f89 | 2001-05-01 20:45:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2376 | =========================== |
| 2377 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2378 | *Release date: 18-Jul-2001* |
| 2379 | |
Tim Peters | f553f89 | 2001-05-01 20:45:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2380 | Core |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2381 | ---- |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2382 | |
Tim Peters | 6d6c1a3 | 2001-08-02 04:15:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2383 | - TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's |
| 2384 | described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP |
| 2385 | 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released |
| 2386 | with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately |
| 2387 | through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this |
| 2388 | with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is |
| 2389 | possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release |
| 2390 | this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards |
Raymond Hettinger | f2f2a2c | 2002-08-19 14:25:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2391 | incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be |
Tim Peters | 6d6c1a3 | 2001-08-02 04:15:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2392 | repaired. |
| 2393 | |
Guido van Rossum | 55a7899 | 2001-07-17 17:22:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2394 | - Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see |
Tim Peters | 11a0d10 | 2001-07-17 18:48:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2395 | below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or |
Guido van Rossum | 55a7899 | 2001-07-17 17:22:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2396 | more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new |
| 2397 | keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a |
| 2398 | future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236). |
| 2399 | Generators will become a standard feature in a future release |
| 2400 | (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an |
| 2401 | ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used. |
| 2402 | (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of |
| 2403 | PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.) |
| 2404 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 12e74b3 | 2001-05-22 08:58:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2405 | - The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now |
| 2406 | only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then |
| 2407 | only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a |
| 2408 | leading BMO character). |
| 2409 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | fab96cc | 2001-05-15 18:38:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2410 | - Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already |
| 2411 | existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access |
| 2412 | to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs. |
| 2413 | |
| 2414 | To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special |
| 2415 | casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects |
| 2416 | were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding). |
Tim Peters | eb28ef2 | 2001-06-02 05:27:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2417 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | fab96cc | 2001-05-15 18:38:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2418 | Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the |
| 2419 | requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will |
| 2420 | return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1") |
| 2421 | will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs |
| 2422 | for various simple to use conversions. |
| 2423 | |
| 2424 | New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode() |
| 2425 | and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects): |
| 2426 | |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2427 | +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ |
| 2428 | |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description | |
| 2429 | +=========+===========+===========+=============================+ |
| 2430 | |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) | |
| 2431 | +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ |
| 2432 | |base64 | string | string | base64 codec | |
| 2433 | +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ |
| 2434 | |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec | |
| 2435 | +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ |
| 2436 | |zlib | string | string | zlib compression | |
| 2437 | +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ |
| 2438 | |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec | |
| 2439 | +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ |
| 2440 | |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec| |
| 2441 | +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ |
Marc-André Lemburg | fab96cc | 2001-05-15 18:38:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2442 | |
Mark Hammond | 2a0af79 | 2001-05-14 03:09:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2443 | - Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode |
| 2444 | encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs' |
| 2445 | as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium |
Guido van Rossum | 1bd797a | 2001-05-14 13:53:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2446 | term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than |
Mark Hammond | 2a0af79 | 2001-05-14 03:09:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2447 | 'mbcs'. |
Guido van Rossum | 1bd797a | 2001-05-14 13:53:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2448 | |
| 2449 | On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for |
Mark Hammond | 2a0af79 | 2001-05-14 03:09:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2450 | functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python |
| 2451 | string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for |
| 2452 | the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's |
| 2453 | default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing |
| 2454 | it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2455 | would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than |
| 2456 | the default encoding for the file system. |
Guido van Rossum | 1bd797a | 2001-05-14 13:53:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2457 | |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2458 | In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with |
| 2459 | Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect, |
| 2460 | increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context. |
Mark Hammond | 2a0af79 | 2001-05-14 03:09:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2461 | See [????] for more details, including examples. |
Tim Peters | f553f89 | 2001-05-01 20:45:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2462 | |
Tim Peters | 61dff2b | 2001-05-08 15:43:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2463 | - Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full |
| 2464 | precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a |
| 2465 | .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the |
| 2466 | 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754 |
| 2467 | floating arithmetic, |
| 2468 | |
| 2469 | x = 9007199254740992.0 |
| 2470 | print long(x) |
| 2471 | |
| 2472 | printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000 |
| 2473 | if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using |
| 2474 | str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal |
| 2475 | now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full |
| 2476 | machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion |
| 2477 | functions are of good quality). |
| 2478 | |
| 2479 | This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and |
| 2480 | usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable |
| 2481 | algorithms to break. |
| 2482 | |
Tim Peters | 2f228e7 | 2001-05-13 00:19:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2483 | - The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed |
| 2484 | benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(), |
| 2485 | dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a |
| 2486 | given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should |
| 2487 | rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the |
| 2488 | order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a |
| 2489 | dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new |
| 2490 | sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted |
| 2491 | order. |
| 2492 | |
Tim Peters | 7a3bfc3 | 2001-06-12 01:22:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2493 | - Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster |
| 2494 | operation along the most common code paths. |
| 2495 | |
Guido van Rossum | 1031582 | 2001-05-01 20:54:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2496 | - Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means |
| 2497 | the same as dict.has_key(x). |
| 2498 | |
Barry Warsaw | 51acc8d | 2001-06-26 20:12:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2499 | - The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping |
| 2500 | objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys() |
| 2501 | and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example, |
| 2502 | {}.update(UserDict()) |
| 2503 | |
Guido van Rossum | 1031582 | 2001-05-01 20:54:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2504 | - Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values |
| 2505 | to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter() |
| 2506 | to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value |
| 2507 | from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the |
| 2508 | tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators |
| 2509 | using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C). |
| 2510 | Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys. |
| 2511 | Iterating over a file generates its lines. |
| 2512 | |
Tim Peters | f553f89 | 2001-05-01 20:45:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2513 | - The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator |
Skip Montanaro | a2a07bc | 2002-09-30 15:23:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2514 | arguments:: |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2515 | |
Tim Peters | e63415e | 2001-05-08 04:38:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2516 | map(), filter(), reduce(), zip() |
Tim Peters | 8572b4f | 2001-05-06 01:05:02 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2517 | list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API) |
| 2518 | max(), min() |
Tim Peters | 1af03e9 | 2001-05-26 19:37:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2519 | join() method of strings |
| 2520 | extend() method of lists |
Tim Peters | 75f8e35 | 2001-05-05 11:33:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2521 | 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API) |
| 2522 | operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API) |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2523 | right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as :: |
Tim Peters | d6d010b | 2001-06-21 02:49:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2524 | x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values |
Tim Peters | 75f8e35 | 2001-05-05 11:33:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2525 | |
Tim Peters | d85e102 | 2001-05-11 21:51:48 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2526 | - Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example, |
| 2527 | random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute). |
| 2528 | |
Tim Peters | e63415e | 2001-05-08 04:38:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2529 | - Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even |
| 2530 | if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==. |
| 2531 | |
Tim Peters | 95bf939 | 2001-05-10 08:32:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2532 | - Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were |
| 2533 | insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python |
| 2534 | to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or |
| 2535 | values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down. |
| 2536 | |
Tim Peters | eb28ef2 | 2001-06-02 05:27:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2537 | - Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help |
| 2538 | dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict |
Tim Peters | 7a3bfc3 | 2001-06-12 01:22:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2539 | d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x |
Tim Peters | eb28ef2 | 2001-06-02 05:27:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2540 | faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and |
| 2541 | the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never). |
Tim Peters | 15d4929 | 2001-05-27 07:39:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2542 | |
Tim Peters | 52e155e | 2001-06-16 05:42:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2543 | - repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple). |
| 2544 | |
| 2545 | |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2546 | Library |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2547 | ------- |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2548 | |
Fred Drake | 960fdf9 | 2001-07-20 18:38:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2549 | - The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase |
Raymond Hettinger | f2f2a2c | 2002-08-19 14:25:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2550 | were added to the string module. These a locale-independent |
Fred Drake | 960fdf9 | 2001-07-20 18:38:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2551 | constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now |
| 2552 | use in appropriate locations in the standard library. |
| 2553 | |
Martin v. Löwis | f0473d5 | 2001-07-18 16:17:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2554 | - The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using |
| 2555 | sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags. |
| 2556 | |
Guido van Rossum | c7e4aca | 2001-07-12 11:54:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2557 | - Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This |
| 2558 | provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition, |
| 2559 | Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based, |
| 2560 | one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation. |
| 2561 | |
Guido van Rossum | 643d391 | 2001-07-05 14:46:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2562 | - The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing, |
| 2563 | repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist() |
| 2564 | method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260. |
| 2565 | |
Martin v. Löwis | ebf94db | 2001-06-06 06:25:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2566 | - A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added. |
| 2567 | |
Barry Warsaw | ffd674d | 2001-05-22 16:00:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2568 | - calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale. |
| 2569 | |
Guido van Rossum | 2e0a654 | 2001-05-15 02:14:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2570 | - strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6), |
| 2571 | and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items |
| 2572 | that are still imported into string.py). |
| 2573 | |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2574 | - Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings. |
| 2575 | |
| 2576 | - pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects. |
| 2577 | Now it does. |
| 2578 | |
Tim Peters | 95b3f78 | 2001-05-14 18:39:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2579 | - pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict). |
| 2580 | |
Tim Peters | 7b9542a | 2001-06-10 23:40:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2581 | - New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C |
| 2582 | types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In |
| 2583 | native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports |
| 2584 | these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config |
| 2585 | process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types. |
Tim Peters | 7a3bfc3 | 2001-06-12 01:22:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2586 | In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are |
| 2587 | 8-byte integral types. |
Tim Peters | 7b9542a | 2001-06-10 23:40:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2588 | |
Guido van Rossum | 83213cc | 2001-06-12 16:48:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2589 | - The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes |
| 2590 | pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help', |
| 2591 | it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or |
| 2592 | 'help(object)'. |
| 2593 | |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2594 | Tests |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2595 | ----- |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2596 | |
| 2597 | - New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value |
Raymond Hettinger | f2f2a2c | 2002-08-19 14:25:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2598 | comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2599 | rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint |
| 2600 | of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!). |
| 2601 | |
Raymond Hettinger | f2f2a2c | 2002-08-19 14:25:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2602 | - New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and |
Tim Peters | 95b3f78 | 2001-05-14 18:39:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2603 | pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple |
| 2604 | cases produce correct output. |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2605 | |
Tim Peters | 4324aa3 | 2001-05-28 22:30:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2606 | C API |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2607 | ----- |
Tim Peters | 4324aa3 | 2001-05-28 22:30:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2608 | |
| 2609 | - Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal |
| 2610 | _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating. |
Skip Montanaro | e5d7f7f | 2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2611 | |
| 2612 | ---- |
| 2613 | |
| 2614 | **(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)** |